Match me if you can
by Hebble
Summary: not your usual VA fic very OOC! All human Dimitri is a multimillionare and Rose is his matchmaker! Rated M for adult themes
1. Chapter 1

Hi guys new story! Yay! As usual my stories are OOC and don't use a lot of the backstories and character development that we have come to know but some of it is still in there. IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT DON'T READ IT! Ill update whenever I feel like it. There aren't many lemons in this story so if you're here for that then sorry to disappoint! Anyway enjoy! Or don't I don't really care. PS obviously I own nothing!

Chapter One

If Rose hadn't found a body lying under "Sherman," she wouldn't have been late for her appointment with the Python. But dirty bare feet stuck out from beneath her nana's ancient Crown Victoria. One extremely cautious glance under the car revealed they were attached to a homeless man known only as Stan, who was famous in her Wicker Park neighborhood for his lack of personal hygiene and fondness for cheap wine. An empty screw-top bottle lay near his chest, which rose and fell with the sounds of his wet snorts. It testified to the importance of her appointment with the Python that she momentarily considered trying to maneuver the car around the body. But her alley parking space was too tight.

She'd allowed plenty of time to get dressed and make the trip downtown for her 11 a.m. appointment. Unfortunately, obstacles kept creeping up, beginning with Mr. Dashkov, who'd caught her at the front door and refused to leave until he'd had his say. Still, this wasn't an emergency yet. All she had to do was get Stan out from under Sherman.

She gingerly prodded his ankle with her foot, noting as she did that the emergency mixture of Hershey's chocolate syrup and Elmer's glue she'd applied to a scuff mark on the heel of her favorite pair of strappy sandals hadn't entirely camouflaged the damage. "Stan?"

He didn't stir.

She prodded him more vigorously. "Stan, wake up. You have to come out of there."

Nothing. Which made it time to revert to more drastic measures. With a grimace, she bent over, gingerly picked up one filthy ankle, and gave it a shake. "Come on, Stan. Wake up!"

Nada. If it weren't for his slurpy snorts, he might have been dead.

She shook him more vigorously. "This happens to be the most important day of my professional life, and I could use a little cooperation here."

Stan wasn't interested in cooperation.

She needed more leverage. Gritting her teeth, she carefully slid up the skirt of the buttercup yellow raw silk suit she'd bought yesterday for 60 percent off at a Field's Day sale and crouched by the bumper. "If you don't get out from under there, I'm calling the police."

Stan snorted.

She dug her heels into the ground and yanked on both filthy ankles. The morning sun beat down on her head. Stan rolled over just far enough to wedge his shoulder under the chassis. She yanked again. Beneath her jacket, the white sleeveless shell she'd chosen to complement Nana's pearl teardrop earrings had begun to stick to her skin. She tried not to think about what was happening to her hair. She hopped the humidity of the Chicago summer hadn't turned her painstakingly curled brown locks into a frizzy and fuzzy mop of limp hair. This hadn't been the best time to run out of hair spray halfway through her styling.

If she didn't get Stan out in the next five minutes, she was in serious trouble. She made her way around to the driver's-side door. Her knees cracked as she crouched down again and peered into his slack-jawed face. "Stan, you have to wake up! You can't stay here."

One grimy eyelid flicked open then slid shut again.

"Look at me." She poked his chest. "If you come out from under there, I'll give you five dollars."

His mouth moved and a guttural rumble oozed out, along with a string of saliva. "G'way."

The smell made her eyes water. "Why did you have to pick today to pass out under my car? And why my car? Why not Mr. Daskov's car?" Mr. Dashkov lived across the alley and spent his retirement coming up with new ways to make Rose crazy.

Time was running out, and she was starting to panic. "Do you want to have sex? Because if you come out, we could maybe talk about it."

More drool and another putrid snort. This was hopeless. She jumped up and dashed toward the house.

Ten minutes later, she managed to lure him out with an open can of beer. Not her best moment.

By the time she'd maneuvered Sherman from the alley to the street, she had only twenty-one minutes left to navigate the traffic into the Loop and find a place to park. Dirt streaked her legs, her shirt was crumpled, and she'd broken a fingernail when she'd opened the beer can. The extra five pounds that had accumulated on her frame since Nana's death no longer seemed like such a big problem.

10:39.

She couldn't risk the construction gridlock on the Kennedy Expressway, so she cut over to Division. In the rearview mirror, another curl sprang free of her hair spray, and perspiration glistened on her forehead. She detoured down Halsted to avoid more road repair. As she maneuvered Sherman's tanklike bulk through the traffic, she scrubbed at her dirty legs with the damp paper towel she'd snatched up in the kitchen. Why couldn't Nana have driven a nice little Honda Civic instead of this bilious green gas-guzzling monster? At five feet three inches, Rose had to sit on a cushion to see over the steering wheel. Nana hadn't bothered with a cushion, but then she'd hardly ever driven. After a dozen years of use, Sherman's speedometer didn't quite register thirty-nine thousand miles.

A cab cut her off. She laid on the horn, and a trickle of perspiration slid between her breasts. She glanced at her watch. 10:50. She tried to remember if she'd put on deodorant after her shower. Of course she had. She always put on deodorant. She lifted her arm to make sure, but just as she took a sniff, she hit a pothole and her mouth bumped against the buttercup yellow lapel, leaving behind a smudge of tawny lipstick.

She gave a cry of dismay and reached across the vast front seat for her purse, only to have it slip off the edge and tumble into the Grand Canyon below. The light at Halsted and Chicago turned red. Her hair was sticking to the back of her neck, and more curls were springing up. She tried to do her yoga breathing, but she'd only been to one class, and it wasn't effective. Why, when Rose's economic future was at stake, had Stan picked this day to pass out under her car?

She crawled into the Loop. 10:59. More of Chicago's permanent road construction. She passed the Daley Center. She didn't have time to follow her customary practice of cruising the streets until she found a metered parking space large enough to accommodate Sherman's bulk. Instead she wheeled into the first exorbitantly expensive parking garage she could find, threw Sherman's keys at the attendant, and took off at a trot.

:05. No need to panic. She'd simply explain about Stan. Surely the Python would understand.

Or not.

A blast of air-conditioning hit her as she entered the lobby of the high-rise office building. 11:08. The elevator was blessedly empty, and she punched the button for the fourteenth floor.

"Don't let him intimidate you," Lissa had told her over the phone. "The Python feeds on fear."

Easy for Lissa to say. Lissa was sitting at home with a hottie football player husband, a great career of her own, and two adorable children.

The doors crept shut. Rose caught sight of herself in the mirrored wall and gave a hiss of dismay. Her raw silk suit had turned into a limp mass of buttercup wrinkles, dirt smudged the side of the skirt, and the lipstick smear on the lapel stood out like a light-up Christmas pin. Worst of all, her hair was uncoiling from the hair spray curl by curl, with the hair spray weighing it down just enough so that the escaping locks hung lank around her face like bedsprings that had been tossed from a tenement window and left in an alley to rust.

Usually when she got upset about her appearance—which even her own mother described only as "nice"—she reminded herself to be grateful for her good features: a pair of very nice dark brown-colored eyes, thick lashes, and—give or take a few dozen freckles—a creamy complexion. But no amount of positive thinking could make the image that stared back at her from the elevator mirror anything but horrifying. She scrambled to tuck a few curls behind her ears and smooth her skirt, but the elevator doors opened before she could repair much of the damage.

11:09.

In front of her, she saw a glass wall imprinted with gold letters, Belikov sports management. She hurried across the carpeted hallway and entered through a door with a curved metal handle. The reception area held a leather couch and matching chairs, framed sports memorabilia, and a big-screen TV muted on a baseball game. The receptionist had short, steel gray hair and a thin-lipped mouth. She took in Rose's disheveled appearance over the top of half glasses with blue metal frames. "May I help you?"

"Rose Hathaway-Mazur. I have an appointment with the Py— with Mr. Belikov."

"I'm afraid you're too late, Miss Mazur."

"Only ten minutes."

"Ten minutes was all the time Mr. Belikov had available in his schedule to see you."

Her suspicions were confirmed. He'd only agreed to see her because Lissa had insisted, and he didn't want to upset his top client's wife. She glanced in desperation at the wall clock. "I'm really only nine minutes late. I have one minute left."

"Sorry." The receptionist turned back to her computer and began tapping away.

"One minute," Rose pleaded. "That's all I ask."

"There's nothing I can do."

Rose needed this meeting, and she needed it now. Pivoting on her heels, she rushed toward the paneled door at the far end of the reception area.

"Miss Mazur!"

Rose dashed into an open hallway with a pair of offices on each side, one of them occupied by two buff young men in dress shirts and neckties. Ignoring them, she headed for an imposing mahogany door set into the center of the back wall and turned the knob.

The Python's office was the color of money: lacquered jade walls, thick moss carpet, and furniture upholstered in varying shades of green accented with bloodred pillows. An assortment of news photos and sports memorabilia hung behind the couch along with a rust-streaked white metal sign with faded black block letters that said beau vista. Appropriate, considering the sweeping wall of windows overlooking Lake Michigan in the distance. The Python himself sat behind a sleek, U-shaped desk, his high-backed chair turned toward the water view. She took in a state-of-the-art desktop computer, a small laptop, a BlackBerry, and a sophisticated black telephone console with enough buttons to land a jumbo jet. An executive headset lay abandoned next to it as the Python spoke directly into the receiver.

"The third-year money is good, but not if they cut you early," he said in a voice that was deeply resonant, crisp, and slightly russian. "I know it's a gamble, but if you sign for one year, we can play the free agent market." She glimpsed a strong tanned wrist, a rugged watch, and long tapered fingers curled around the receiver. "Ultimately, it's your decision, Jamal. All I can do is advise you."

The door burst open behind her, and the receptionist flew in, feathers ruffled like an offended parakeet. "I'm sorry, Dimitri. She got past me."

The Python turned slowly in his chair, and Rose felt as if she'd been punched in the stomach.

He was square-jawed and tough, everything about him proclaiming a brash, self-made man—a roughneck who'd flunked charm school the first couple of times around but finally gotten it right on the third pass. His hair was thick and long, its rich color a cross between a leather portfolio and a bottle of Bud. He had a straight, confident nose and bold dark eyebrows, one of which was bisected near the end with a thin pale scar. The firm set of his well-molded mouth proclaimed a low tolerance for fools, a passion for hard work that bordered on obsession, and possibly—although this might be her imagination—a determination to own a small chalet near St. Tropez before he was fifty. If it weren't for a vague irregularity to his features, he would have been unbearably gorgeous. Instead, he was merely drop-dead good-looking. What did a man like this need with a matchmaker?

As he spoke into the phone, he turned his eyes on her. They were the exact warm melted chocolate color of her nana's hot chocolates in winter singed at the edges with displeasure. "This is what you pay me for, Jamal." He took in Rose's disheveled appearance and shot the receptionist a hard look. "I'll talk to Ray this afternoon. Take care of that hammy. And tell Audette I'm sending her another case of Krug grande cuvee."

"Your eleven o'clock appointment," the receptionist said as he hung up. "I told her she was too late to see you."

He shoved aside a copy of Pro Football Weekly. His hands were broad, his fingernails clean and neatly clipped. Still, it wasn't hard to imagine them ringed with motor oil. She took in a navy print necktie that probably cost more than her entire outfit and the perfect fit of his pale blue dress shirt, which could only have been custom-made to accommodate the width of his shoulders before tapering toward his waist.

"Apparently, she doesn't listen well." His shirt molded to an impressive chest as he shifted in his chair, making Rose uncomfortably aware of a junior high science lesson she vaguely remembered about pythons.

They swallowed their prey whole. Head first.

"Do you want me to call security?" the receptionist asked.

He turned his predator's eyes on her, leaving Rose at the receiving end of another of those knockout punches. Despite the effort he'd taken to polish all those rough edges, the bar brawler still showed. "I think I can handle her."

A jolt of sexual awareness shot through her—so inappropriate, so unwelcome, so totally out of place that she bumped into one of the side chairs. She was never at her best around excessively confident men, and the absolute necessity of impressing this particular specimen made her silently curse her clumsiness right along with her rumpled suit and Medusa hair.

Lissa had told her to be aggressive. He's fought his way to the top, one client at a time. Brutal aggression is the only emotion Dimitri Belikov understands. But Rose wasn't a naturally aggressive person. Everyone from bank clerks to taxi drivers took advantage of her. Just last week she'd lost a confrontation with the nine-year-old she'd caught egging Sherman. Even her own family—especially her own family—walked all over her.

And she was sick of it. Sick of being condescended to, sick of too many people getting the best of her, sick of feeling like a failure. If she backed down now, where would it end? She met those chocolate brown eyes and knew the time had come to tap deep into her Hathaway-Mazur gene pool and play hardball.

"There was a dead body under my car." It was almost true. Stan had been dead weight.

Unfortunately, the Python didn't look impressed, but then he'd probably been responsible for so many dead bodies that he'd grown bored with the whole concept of corpses. She took a deep breath. "All that red tape. It made me late. Otherwise, I would have been punctual. More than punctual. I'm very responsible. And professional." Just like that, she ran out of air. "Do you mind if I sit down?"

"Yes."

"Thank you." She sank into the nearest chair.

"You don't listen well, do you?"

"What?"

He gazed at her for a long moment before dismissing his receptionist. "Hold my calls for five minutes, Alberta, unless it's Mia Rinaldi." The woman left, and he gave a resigned sigh. "I assume you're Lissa's friend." Even his teeth were intimidating: strong, square, and very white.

"College buddies."

He tapped his fingers on the desk. "I don't mean to be rude, but you'll have to make this fast."

Who did he think he was kidding? He thrived on being rude. She imagined him in college dangling some poor computer geek out a dorm window or laughing in the face of a weeping, possibly pregnant, girlfriend. She sat straighter in the chair, trying to project confidence. "I'm Rose Hathaway-Mazur from Perfect for You."

"The matchmaker." His fingers tapped away.

"I think of myself as a marriage facilitator."

"Do you now?" He drilled her again with those money-hard eyes. "Lissa told me your company was called something like Myrna the Matchmaker."

Too late, she remembered that she'd overlooked that particular point in her conversations with Lissa. "Marriages by Myrna was started by my grandmother in the seventies. She died three months ago. I've been modernizing since then, and I've also given the company a new name to reflect our philosophy of personalized service for the discriminating executive." Forgive me, Nana, but it had to be done.

"Exactly how large is this company of yours?"

One phone, one computer, Nana's dusty old file cabinet, and herself. "It's a manageable size. I believe the key to flexibility is staying lean." She hurried on. "Although this was my grandmother's company, I'm well qualified to take over." Her qualifications included a B.A. in theater from Northwestern that she'd never officially used, a short-lived stint at a dot-com that went bankrupt, partnership in a failed gift shop, and, more recently, a position at an employment agency that had fallen victim to the economy.

He leaned back in his chair. "I'm going to cut to the chase and save us both time. I'm already under contract with Tasha Ozera."

Rose was prepared for this. Tasha Ozera, of Power Matches, ran the most exclusive matchmaking firm in Chicago. Tasha had built her business around serving the city's top executives, discriminating men too busy to find the trophy wives they desired and rich enough to pay her exorbitant fees. Tasha was well connected, aggressive, and reputed to be ruthless, although that opinion came from her competitors and could be based on professional jealousy. Since Rose had never met her, she was withholding judgment.

"I know about your contract, but that doesn't mean you can't also use Perfect for You."

He glanced toward the flashing buttons on his phone, a vertical slash of irritation bisecting his forehead. "Why would I bother?"

"Because I'll work harder for you than you can imagine. And because I'll introduce you to a group of women with brains and accomplishments, women who won't bore you after the newness wears off."

He lifted an eyebrow. "You know me that well, do you?"

"Mr. Belikov you're obviously accustomed to being around beautiful women, and I'm certain you've had more opportunities than you can count to marry one of them. But you haven't. That tells me that you want something more multifaceted than simply a beautiful wife."

"And you don't think I can find that through Tasha Ozera."

She didn't believe in trashing the competition, even though she knew fashion models and socialites were exactly the sort of women Tasha would be introducing him to. "I only know what Perfect for You has to offer, and I think you'll be impressed."

"I barely have time to deal with Power Matches, let alone adding anybody else to the mix." He uncoiled from his chair. He was tall, so it took a while.

She'd already noted the wide shoulders. Now she took in the rest of him. He had a lean-muscled athlete's body. If you liked your men swimming in testosterone and your sex life dangerous, he'd be number one on your automatic dial. Not that Rose was thinking about her sex life. Or at least she hadn't been until he stood up.

He stepped around the corner of his desk and extended his hand. "Good effort, Rose. Thanks for your time."

He wasn't going to give her a chance. He'd never intended to do more than go through the motions so he could pacify Lissa. Rose thought of the energy she'd expended to get here, the twenty bucks it would cost to bail Sherman out of the parking garage, the effort she'd put into learning everything she could about the thirty-four-year-old overachieving country boy standing before her. She thought of her hopes for this meeting, her dreams of making Perfect for You unique and successful. Years of frustration boiled inside her, fueled by crappy judgment, bad luck, and missed opportunities.

Ignoring his hand, she shot to her feet. He was more than a foot taller, and she had to tilt her neck to meet his eyes. "Do you still remember what it was like to be the underdog, Mr. Belikov, or was that too long ago? Do you remember when you were so hungry to close a deal that you'd do anything to make it happen? You'd drive across the country without sleep just to meet a Heisman candidate for breakfast? You'd spend hours hanging around the parking lot outside the Bears' practice field, trying to catch the attention of one of the veterans? Or what about the time you hauled yourself out of bed with a raging fever so you could bail another agent's client out of jail?"

"You've done your homework." He cast an impatient eye at the blinking phone buttons, but he didn't throw her out, so she kept going.

"When you started in business, players like Christian Ozera wouldn't give you the time of day. Do you remember what that was like? Do you remember when reporters weren't calling you for quotes? When you weren't on first-name terms with everybody in the NFL?"

"If I say I remember, will you leave?" He reached for the executive headset that lay next to the telephone console.

She curled her hands into fists, hoping she sounded passionate instead of loony. "All I want is a chance. The same chance you got when Christian fired his old agent and put his faith in a fast-talking, sports-savvy guy who made his way from an armpit town in southern Illinois to Harvard Law."

He coiled back into his chair, one dark eyebrow angling upward.

"A blue-collar kid who played college football for the scholarship, but counted on his brains to get ahead. A guy with nothing more than big dreams and a strong work ethic to recommend him. A guy who—"

"Stop before you make me cry," he said dryly.

"Just give me a chance. Let me set up one introduction. Just one. If you don't like the woman I choose, I'll never bother you again. Please. I'll do anything."

That caught his attention. He pushed aside the headset, tilted back in his chair, and rubbed the corner of his mouth with his thumb. "Anything?"

She didn't flinch from his assessing gaze. "Whatever it takes."

His eyes made a calculated journey from her rumpled russet hair to her mouth, down along her throat to her breasts. "Well… I haven't gotten laid for a while."

Her constricted throat muscles relaxed. The Python was toying with her. "Then why don't we do something about that on a permanent basis?" She grabbed her fake leather tote and whipped out the folder of material she'd finished preparing at five o'clock that morning. "This will tell you a little more about Perfect for You. I've included our mission statement, a timetable, and our fee structure."

Now that he'd had his fun, he was all business. "I'm interested in results, not mission statements."

"And results are what I'll give you."

"We'll see."

She drew an unsteady breath. "Does that mean…"

He picked up the telephone headset and hooked it around his neck, leaving the cord dangling down his shirtfront in a serpentine tail. "You've got one chance. Tomorrow night. Hit me with your best candidate."

"Really?" Her knees went weak. "Yes… Fantastic! But… I need to clarify exactly what you're looking for."

"Let's see how good you are." He flipped up the headset.

"Nine o'clock at Sienna's on Clark Street. Make the introduction but don't plan on leaving. Stay at the table and keep the conversation going. I work hard at what I do. I don't intend to work hard at this, too."

"You want me to stay?"

"Twenty minutes exactly. Then take her away."

"Twenty minutes? Don't you think she'll find that a little… demeaning?"

"Not if she's the right woman." He gave her his country boy's smile. "And do you know why, Miss Mazur? Because the right woman will be too damned sweet to take offense. Now get the hell out of here while you're ahead."

She did.

By the time she slipped into the McDonald's restroom, Rose had stopped shaking. She changed into capris, a tank, and sandals. Today's experience had justified her lifelong phobia of snakes. But other women wouldn't see Dimitri Belikov like that. He was rich, successful, and gorgeous, which made him a dream match, assuming he didn't scare his dates to death, which was a distinct possibility. All she needed to do was find the right woman.

She pulled her wild hair back from her face with a pair of barrettes. She'd always worn her hair up to keep it under control, because she couldn't bring herself to cut it short, that and she always thought she would look like a college freshman than a serious professional wit short hair. Not for the first time did she wish she had a spare five hundred dollars to have it professionally straightened, but she couldn't even pay her utility bill.

She stowed Nana's pearl earrings in an empty Altoids box and took a swig of lukewarm water from one of the bottles she'd dug out of Sherman's backseat. She kept the car well stocked: snacks and water bottles; a change of clothes; Tampax and toiletries; her new brochures and business cards; workout gear in case the mood struck her, which it hardly ever did; and, just recently, a box of condoms in the event one of her new clients developed a sudden, desperate need, although she couldn't see men like Clarence Donahue or Aaron Drozdov being that impulsive. Clarence was an elementary school principal, good with kids, but nervous with grown women, and Aaron the hypochondriac wouldn't have sex without running his partner through the Mayo Clinic.

One thing was certain. She'd never have to pass out emergency condoms to Dimitri Belikov. A man like that always came prepared.

She wrinkled her nose. Time to rise above her dislike. So what if he was overbearing and dictatorial, not to mention too rich and too successful for his own good? He was the key to her economic future. If she wanted Perfect for You to be successful as a specialized, high-end matchmaking service, she had to find him a wife. Once that happened, the word would spread, and Perfect for You would become the hottest service in Chicago. Which it definitely wasn't now, because inheriting her grandmother's business had also meant inheriting her remaining clients. Although Rose was doing her best to honor Nana's memory, it was time to move forward.

She squirted soap on her hands and considered her place in the business world. Matchmaking services came in mind-boggling varieties, and the rise of inexpensive online dating services had forced a lot of brick-and-mortar companies like hers to shut down while others scrambled to find a niche. They offered speed dates, lunch dates, and adventure outings. Some staged singles dinner parties, others served only graduates of prestigious universities or members of specific religious denominations. A lucky few, like Power Matches, were holding their own as "millionaire services," accepting only male clients and charging them staggering fees for introductions to beautiful women.

Rose intended to set Perfect for You apart from all of them. She wanted to make her name the first one that upscale Chicago singles, male and female, thought of when they were ready for a committed relationship and realized that old-fashioned personalized service was the best way to get it. She already had a few clients—Clarence and Aaron her most recent— but not nearly enough to turn a profit. And until she'd established her credentials, she couldn't charge higher fees. Finding a match for Dimitri Belikov would make those select clients and bigger fees possible. Except why hadn't he been able to find a wife on his own?

She'd have to speculate on that later because it was time to get to work. She'd intended to spend the afternoon patrolling Loop-area coffeehouses, fertile ground for finding both prospective clients and possible matches for the ones she had, but that was before she'd known how quickly she needed to come up with a candidate who'd knock Dimitri Belikov off his feet.

Heat shimmered from the asphalt as she made her way across the parking lot to her car. The air smelled of fried food and exhaust. Chicago had declared its first Ozone Action Day of the summer, and it was barely June. She tossed the hopelessly wrinkled yellow suit in a trash bin so she never had to look at it again.

As she climbed inside the stifling car, her cell rang. She propped the door open to get some air. "This is Rose."

"Rosemarie, I have wonderful news."

She sighed and dropped her forehead against the hot steering wheel. Just when she'd thought the worst of her day was behind her. "Hi, Mom."

"Your father talked to Mason an hour ago. Your brother is officially a vice president. They announced it this morning."

"Ohmygod! That's great!"

Rose exuded enthusiasm, bubbled over with bliss, radiated relish, but her mother's ESP kicked in anyway. "Of course it's great," she snapped. "Honestly, Rosemarie, I don't know why you have to be so begrudging. Mason has worked hard to get where he is. No one handed him a thing."

Except adoring parents, a first-rate college education, and a generous post-graduation cash gift to tide him over.

Exactly the same things Rose had been given.

"Only thirty-five," Janine Hathaway went on, "and vice president of one of the most important accounting firms in Southern California."

"He's amazing." Rose lifted her forehead from the burning hot steering wheel before it branded her with the mark of Cain.

"Serena is giving a pool party next weekend to celebrate Mason's promotion. They're expecting Johnny Depp."

Somehow Rose couldn't imagine Johnny Depp showing up at one of her sister-in-law's pool parties, but she wasn't stupid enough to express her skepticism. "Wow! That's impressive."

"Serena is trying to decide between a South Pacific theme or going with the western thing."

"She entertains so well, I'm sure whatever she decides will be perfect."

Janine Hathaway's psychic abilities were worthy of her own 800 line. "Rosemarie, you have to try harder to get over your hostility toward Serena. Nothing is more important than family. Mason adores her. We all do. And she's a wonderful mother."

Beads of perspiration were forming at her hairline. "How's Jamison's potty training coming along?" Not Jimmy, Jamie, Jim, or any variation thereof. Just Jamison.

"He's so bright. It's only a matter of time. I'll admit I was skeptical about all those learning tapes, but here he is, only three, and what an amazing vocabulary."

"Is he still saying asshole?"

"That's not funny."

In the old days, when her mother had a sense of humor, it would have been funny, but, at sixty-two, Janine Hathaway wasn't taking well to retirement. Even though she and Rose's father had bought a spectacular oceanside home in Naples, Florida, Janine missed St. Louis. Restless and bored, she'd turned all the energy she'd once directed toward a successful banking career onto her three grown children. Especially Rose, her only failure.

"How's Dad?" Rose said, hoping to postpone the inevitable.

"How do you think he is? He plays eighteen holes in the morning and watches the Golf Channel all afternoon. He hasn't opened a medical journal in months. You'd think after forty years as a surgeon, he'd be a little curious, but the only time he shows any interest in medicine is when he's talking to your brother."

On to chapter 2 in the amazing saga of The Mazur Wonder Twins, this chapter featuring the dazzling life of that prominent St. Louis heart surgeon, Dr. Eddie Mazur. Rose reached for her water bottle, wishing she'd had the foresight to fill it with a nice peach-flavored vodka. "There's a lot of traffic, Mom. I don't think I can stay on my cell much longer."

"Your father's so proud of Eddie. He just had another article published in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. Yesterday, when we met the Lazar's for Caribbean Night at the club, I had to kick him under the table to get him to shut up about it. The Lazar's children are a terrible disappointment."

Just like Rose.

Her mother swooped in for the kill. "Did you get the applications I sent?"

Since Janine had sent the applications FedEx and undoubtedly tracked their arrival on her computer, the question was rhetorical. Rose's head started to pound. "Mother…"

"You can't keep drifting like this—jobs, relationships—I won't even mention that awful business with Jessie. We should have cut you off financially in college when you insisted on majoring in theater. And hasn't that been a gold mine of job opportunities? You're thirty-one. And you're a Mazur. It's long past time you settled down and applied yourself."

Rose had told herself she wouldn't rise to the bait regardless of the provocation, but between Stan, Dimitri Belikov, the mention of Jessie, and a fear that her mother was right, she broke. "Applying myself in the Mazur family only means two things, right? Medicine or finance?"

"Don't start. You know exactly what I mean. That awful matchmaking business hasn't turned a profit in years. Mother only opened it so she could nib into other people's lives. You're not getting any younger, Rosemarie, and I won't stand by and watch you waste more of your life when you could be going back to school and preparing for the future."

"I don't want—"

"You've always been good with numbers. You'd make a wonderful accountant. And I've told you we'll pay your tuition."

"I don't want to be an accountant! And I don't need my parents supporting me."

"Living in Nana's house doesn't count, then?"

It was a knockout punch. Rose's cheeks burned. Her mother had inherited Nana's Wicker Park house. Rose was living in it, ostensibly to keep it from being vandalized, but really because Janine didn't want Rose staying in some "dangerous urban neighborhood." Rose lashed back. "Fine! Do you want me to move out? Is that what you want?"

Oh, God, she sounded like she was fifteen again. Why did she always let Janine do this to her? Before she could retrench, her mother went on, speaking in the same overly patient maternal voice she'd used when Rose was eight and had announced that she'd run away from home if her brothers didn't stop calling her Spud.

"What I want you to do is go back to school and get your accounting degree. You know Mason will help you get a job."

"I'm not going to be an accountant!"

"Then what are you going to be, Rosemarie? Tell me. Do you think I enjoy nagging? If you could just once explain it to me…"

"I want to run my own business," Rose said, sounding whiny even to herself.

"You tried that, remember? The gift shop? Then there was that awful dot-com. Mason and I both warned you. Then that tacky employment agency. You can't stick with anything."

"That's not fair! The employment agency folded."

"So did the gift shop and the dot-com. Did you ever think it's more than coincidental that whatever business you attach yourself to goes bottom up? It's because you deal in daydreams not in reality. Like that whole fantasy you had about being an actress."

Rose sank lower in her seat. She'd been a decent actress, taking solid supporting roles in a couple of university productions and directing some studio plays. But by her junior year, she'd realized theater wasn't her passion, just an escape into a world where she didn't have to be Mason and Eddie Mazur's incompetent little sister.

"And look what happened with Jessie," Janine went on. "Of all the— Well, never mind about that. The point is, you've bought into this New Age nonsense that all you have to do is want something badly enough, and you can get it. But life doesn't work that way. It takes more than desire. Successful people are pragmatic. They make plans that are rooted in reality."

"I don't want to be an accountant!"

A long, disapproving silence followed this outburst. Annabelle knew exactly what her mother was thinking. That Rose was being Rose again, high-strung, overly dramatic, and impractical, the family's lone failure. But no one could upset her like her mother.

Except her father.

And her brothers.

"Stop screwing around with your life, Spud, and settle on something practical," Eddie, the big-shot doctor, had written in his last e-mail, which he'd thoughtfully copied to the rest of the family plus two aunts and three cousins.

"You're thirty-one," Mason, the big-shot accountant, had noted on her recent birthday card. "I was making two hundred grand a year when I was thirty-one."

Her father, the ex-big-shot surgeon, took a different approach. "Birdied number four yesterday. My putting game's finally come together. And, Rose… It's long past time you found yourself."

Only Nana Myrna had offered support. "You'll find yourself when the time is right, sweetheart."

Rose missed Nana Myrna. She'd been a failure, too.

"The accounting field is wide open," her mother said. "It's growing by leaps and bounds."

"So is my business," Rose retorted in a mad act of self-destruction. "I've landed a very important client."

"Who?"

"You know I can't give you his name."

"Is he under seventy?"

Rose told herself not to take the bait, but there was a reason she'd earned her reputation as the family screwup. "He's thirty-four, a high-profile multimillionaire."

"Why on earth has he hired you?"

Rose gritted her teeth. "Because I'm the best, that's why."

"We'll see." Her mother's voice softened, driving the point of her maternal knife home. "I know I aggravate you, baby, but it's only because I love you, and I want you to fulfill your potential."

Rose sighed. "I know you do. I love you, too."

The conversation finally ground to an end. Rose stowed her cell, slammed the door, and jabbed the key into the ignition. Maybe if there wasn't so much truth behind her mother's words, they wouldn't sting so badly.

As she backed out of the parking place, she gazed into the rearview mirror and uttered little Jamison's favorite word. Twice.


	2. Chapter 2

**Soo I had this already sitting around a figured I may as well post it…**

Chapter Two

Adrian Ivashkov entered the club like a frigging movie star, a linen sports coat draped over his shoulders, diamond studs glittering in his earlobes, and a pair of Oakleys shading his emerald green eyes. With his rakish stubble, and brown, just-woke-up hair all shiny and gel-rumpled, he was L.A.'s gift to the city of Chicago. Dimitri grinned, glad for the distraction. The boy had style, and the Windy City had missed him.

"Do you know Adrian?" The blonde trying to drape herself over Dimitri's right arm watched as Ivashkov flashed the crowd his red carpet smile. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the crap music coming from the dance floor of Waterworks, the site of tonight's private party. Although the Sox were playing in Cleveland and the Bulls hadn't drifted back to town yet, the city's other teams were -well represented at the party, mainly players from the Stars and Bears, but also most of the Cubs outfield, a couple of Blackhawks, and a goalie for the Chicago Fire. Added to the mix were a few actors, a rock star, and women, dozens of them, each more beautiful than the next, the sexual plunder of the rich and famous.

"Sure he knows Adrian." The brunette on his other side gave the blonde a condescending look. "Dimitri knows every football player in town, doncha, lover?" As she spoke, she surreptitiously slid her hand around his inner thigh, but Dimitri ignored his hard-on, just as he'd been ignoring all his hard-ons since he'd gone into training for marriage.

Going into training for marriage was hell.

He reminded himself that he'd gotten where he was by sticking to a plan, and being married before he hit thirty-five was the next step. His wife would be the ultimate symbol of his accomplishments, the final proof that he'd left the Beau Vista Trailer Park behind him forever.

"I know him," he said. He didn't add that he hoped to know him a whole lot better.

As Ivashkov moved deeper into the room, the Waterworks crowd parted, making way for the former Southern Cal player who'd been tapped by the Stars to take over as the team's first-string quarterback when Christian Ozera hung up his spikes at the end of the upcoming season. A hint of mystery surrounded Adrian Ivashkov's family background, and the quarterback typically gave vague answers when anyone tried to pry. Dimitri had done a little digging on his own and unearthed some interesting rumors, but he kept them to himself. The Zagorski brothers, slobbering over a pair of brunettes at the other end of the bar, finally became aware of what was happening and shot to attention. Within seconds, they were stumbling over all four of their Prada loafers trying to be the first to get to him.

Dimitri took another sip of beer and left them to it. The Zagorskis' interest in Ivashkov didn't surprise him. The quarterback's agent had died in a rock-climbing incident five days earlier, leaving him without representation, something the Zagorski brothers, and every other agent in the country, hoped to rectify. The Zagorskis ran Z-Group, the only Chicago sports management business that rivaled Dimitri's. He hated their guts, mainly for their ethics, but also because they'd stolen a first-round draft pick from him five years ago when he'd needed it most. He'd retaliated by taking Shane Reyes from them, which hadn't been all that hard to do. The Zagorskis were good at making big promises to their clients but not as good at delivering them.

Dimitri had no illusions about his profession. In the past ten years, the business of being a sports agent had grown more corrupt than a cockfight. In most states licensing was a joke. Any two-bit hustler could print up a business card, call himself a sports agent, and prey on gullible college athletes, especially the guys who'd grown up with nothing. These sleazeballs slipped them money under the table, promised cars and jewelry, hired hookers, and paid "bounties" to anybody who could deliver the signature of a high-profile athlete on a management contract. Some reputable agents had left the business because they didn't believe they could be both honest and competitive, but Dimitri wouldn't be driven away. Despite the sleaze factor, he loved what he did. He loved the adrenaline rush of signing a client, of making the deal. He loved seeing how far he could push the rules. That's what he did best. He pushed the rules… but he didn't break them. And he never cheated a client.

He watched Ivashkov bend his head to hear what the Zagorski boys were saying. Dimitri wasn't worried. Ivashkov might be an L.A. glamour boy, but he wasn't stupid. He knew every agent in the country was after him, and he wouldn't be making any decisions tonight.

A sex kitten Dimitri had slept with a couple of times in his pre-training camp days zeroed in on him, hair swaying, nipples puckered like overripe cherries beneath her slinky top. "I'm taking a poll. If you could only have one kind of sex for the rest of your life, what would it be? So far the vote's running three to one in favor of oral."

"How about I just vote for heterosexual."

All three of the women laughed uproariously, as if they'd never heard anything funnier. He was the king of stand-up comics, all right.

The party began to heat up, and a few of the women on the dance floor started running through the jets of water that gave Waterworks its name. Their clothes melted to their bodies, outlining every curve and hollow. He'd loved the club scene when he'd first come to town, the music and booze, the beautiful women and free sex, but by the time he'd hit thirty, he'd grown jaded. Still, making the scene, bullshit or not, was an important part of his business, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd been in bed alone at a decent hour.

"Dimitri, my man."

He grinned as Ryan Aylesworth approached. The Chicago Bears rookie was a great-looking kid, tall and muscular with a square jaw and mischievous brown eyes. The two of them executed one of a dozen or so tricky handshakes Dimitri had mastered over the years.

"How's the Python doin' tonight?" Ryan asked.

"No complaints." Dimitri had worked hard to recruit the Ohio State fullback, and when Ryan had gone ninth to the Bears in the first round of last April's draft, it had been one of those perfect moments that made up for all the crap. Ryan was a hard worker, and he came from a great family. Dimitri intended to do everything he could to keep him out of trouble.

He signaled the women that he wanted some privacy, and Ryan looked only momentarily disappointed as they faded away. Like everyone else in the club, he wanted to talk about Ivashkov. "Why aren't you over there kissing Adrian's skinny white ass like everybody else?"

"I do my ass kissing in private."

"Ivashkov's one smart dude. He's gonna take his time findin' a new agent."

"Can't blame him. He's got a great future."

"You want me to put in a word with him?"

"Sure." Dimitri hid a grin. Ivashkov wouldn't give a damn about the recommendation of a rookie. The only person's opinion Adrian Ivashkov might care about would be Christian Ozera's, and even that wasn't certain. Adrian alternated between idolizing Christian and resenting him because Chris had stayed healthy last season, which kept Adrian on the bench for one more year.

"So what's this I been hearing about you givin' up women? All the ladies tonight are talkin' about it. They're feeling neglected, you know what I'm sayin'?"

No use trying to explain to a twenty-two-year-old kid with freshly minted hundred-dollar bills stuffed into every pocket that the chase had gotten old. "I've been busy."

"Too busy for pussy?"

Ryan looked so honestly dumbfounded that Dimitri laughed. And, face it, the kid had a point. Everywhere Dimitri looked, ripe breasts spilled from plunging necklines, and tiny skirts cupped soft, sweet asses. But he wanted more than sex. He wanted the ultimate prize. Someone polished, beautiful, and sweet. He imagined his silver spoon wife, lithe and lovely, the calm in the center of his storm. She'd always have his back, keep his rough edges smoothed down. She'd be the woman who'd finally make him feel as though he'd achieved everything he'd dreamed of. Except playing for the Dallas Cowboys.

He smiled at his boyhood fantasy. That one he'd had to let go of, right along with his teenage plan to nail a different porn star every night. He'd gone to the University of Illinois on a football scholarship and played first team all four years. But as a senior, he'd accepted the fact that he'd never be good enough to be more than a third-stringer for the pros. Even then he'd known he couldn't dedicate his life to being anything but the best, so he'd turned his dreams in another direction. He'd gotten top marks on his LSATs, and an influential U of I alum had pulled the political strings that got him into Harvard. Dimitri had learned to utilize his brains, his street smarts, and his ability to camouflage himself so that he could fit in anywhere: a tenement, a locker room, the deck of a private yacht.

Although he made no secret of his country boy roots— flaunted them when he needed to—he didn't let anybody see how much dirt still clung to those roots. He wore the best clothes, drove the best cars, lived at the best address. He knew wine, even if he seldom drank it; understood the fine arts academically, if not aesthetically; and didn't need a reference book to identify a fish fork.

"I know what your problem is," Ryan said, mischief in his eyes. "Chicks here don't have enough class for Mister Ivy League. You rich guys like your ladies with big fancy monograms tattooed on their asses."

"Yeah, so they match up with that big, fancy Harvard H I've got tattooed on mine."

Ryan started laughing, and the women drifted back to see what was so funny. A few years ago, Dimitri would have enjoyed their predatory sexuality. From the time he was a kid, women had been attracted to him. When he was thirteen, he'd been worked over by one of his father's girlfriends. Now he knew it had been sexual abuse, but at the time he hadn't understood, and he'd been so panicky and guilt stricken that he'd thrown up for fear of the old man finding out. One more sordid episode in a childhood filled with them.

He'd put most of the remnants of that childhood behind him, and the rest would disappear when he found the right woman. Or when Tasha Ozera found her for him. After spending the past year looking on his own, he'd realized the woman of his dreams wouldn't be hanging out in the clubs and sports bars where he spent his so-called leisure time. Still he'd never have thought of hiring a matchmaker if he hadn't seen a glowing article about Tasha in Chicago magazine and Christian's recomendadtion. Her impressive connections and formidable track record were exactly what he needed.

Rosemarie Hathaway-Mazur, on the other hand, wasn't. As a professional hard-ass, he didn't usually let himself get suckered in, but all that desperate earnestness had gotten to him. He remembered her awful yellow suit, her big brown doe eyes, those flushed round cheeks, and long brown hair. She'd looked as though she'd tumbled out of Santa's bag after a bad sleigh ride.

He should have kept his mouth shut about his wife hunt around Christian, but how could he have known his star client not only had an aunt in the matchmaking business but also his wife, Lissa, would have a friend in the business? As soon as Dimitri sat through the introduction he'd promised, Rose Mazur and her screwball operation were history.

A little after one in the morning, Adrian Ivashkov finally made his way to Dimitri's side. Despite the club's dim lighting, the boy still wore his Oakleys, but he'd ditched his sports coat, and his sleeveless white silk T-shirt showed off the Holy Grail of football shoulders—big, strong, and unmarred by arthroscopic surgery. Adrian propped one hip on the empty bar stool that opened up next to Dimitri. As he extended his leg for balance, he revealed a tan leather cap-toe boot Dimitri had heard one of the women say was from Dolce & Gabbana.

"Okay, Belikov, your turn to suck up."

Dimitri set his elbow on the bar. "My condolences on your loss. McGruder was a good agent."

"He hated your guts."

"I hated his, too, but he was still a good agent, and there aren't a whole lot of us left." He studied the quarterback more closely. "Shit, Ivashkov, you been bleaching your hair?"

"Highlights. You like 'em?"

"If you were any prettier, I'd want to date you."

Ivashkov grinned. "You'd have to stand in line."

Both of them knew they weren't talking about dating.

"I like you, Belikov," Ivashkov said, "so I'm going to tell you up front. You're out of the running. I'd be stupid to sign with the agent who's at the top of Mia Rinaldi's shit list."

"The only reason I'm on that list is because Mia's cheap." Not entirely true, but this wasn't the time to go into the complexities of his relationship with the owner of the Chicago Stars. "Mia doesn't like the fact that I won't roll over and play dead for her like everybody else. "Why don't you ask Christian if he has any complaints?"

"Yeah, well, Chris happens to be married to Mia's sister and I don't, so the situation isn't exactly the same. The truth is, I already piss Ms. Rinaldi off without even trying, and I'm not going to make it worse by hiring you."

Once again, Dimitri's dysfunctional relationship with Mia Rinaldi was getting in the way of what he wanted. No matter how hard he tried to fix things with her, his early mistakes kept coming back to bite him in the ass. He never let the pressure show and only shrugged. "You gotta do what you gotta do."

"You guys are all bloodsuckers," Adrian said bitterly. "You take two, three percent off the top, and for doing what? For pushing a few papers around. Big fucking deal. How many two-a-days have you sweated through?"

"Not as many as you, that's for damn sure. I was too busy getting A's in my classes on contract law."

Ivashkov smiled.

Dimitri smiled back. "And just so we're straight… When it comes to those big endorsements I've been landing for my clients, I take a hell of a lot more than three percent off the top."

Ivashkov didn't blink. "The Zagorskis are guaranteeing me Nike. Can you do that?"

"I never guarantee what I don't have in my pocket." He took a sip of beer. "I don't bullshit my clients, at least about anything important. I also don't steal from them, lie to them, or disrespect them behind their backs. There's no agent in the business who works harder than I do. Not a one. And that's all I've got to offer." He rose, pulled out his money clip, and slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. "If you want to talk about it, you know where to find me."

* * *

When Dimitri got home that night, he pulled the smudged invitation from his dresser drawer. He kept it lying around as a reminder of the gut-wrenching pain he'd felt when he'd first opened it. He'd been twenty-three.

You are cordially invited to attend the marriage of Galina Ames Shelton

and

Dimitri A. Belikov

The Silver Anniversary Celebration of

Victoria and Douglas Pierce Shelton III

and

The Golden Anniversary Celebration of Mildred and Douglas Pierce Shelton II

Valentine's Day

2:00 p.m.

The Manor

East Hampton, New York

The wedding planner had sent him the invitation by mistake, not realizing he was the groom, which spoke volumes all by itself. For the first time he'd discovered his marriage to Galina was just one cog of a well-oiled family production. All his securities came crashing in. He'd known it was too good to be true, Galina Shelton falling in love with a guy who was grubbing his way through law school by cleaning out septic tanks.

"I don't see why you're so upset about this," Galina had said when he'd confronted her. "The dates just worked out that way. You should be happy we're keeping up the tradition. Getting married on Valentine's Day is good luck in my family."

"This isn't just any Valentine's Day," he retorted. "Golden anniversary, silver anniversary . . . What would you have done for a husband if I hadn't come along on schedule?"

"But you did, so I don't see the problem."

He'd pleaded with her to change the date, but she'd refused. "If you love me, you'll do this my way," she'd said.

He had loved her, but after a week of sleepless nights, he'd realized she only loved him as a convenience.

The wedding had gone on with one of Galina's childhood friends standing in as the third-generation Valentine's Day groom. It had taken Dimitri months to recover. Two years later, the couple had divorced, putting a permanent end to Shelton family tradition, but he'd felt no satisfaction.

Galina wasn't the first person he'd given his heart to. As a kid, he'd given it away to everybody, beginning with his drunken father and continuing through the never-ending stream of transient women the old man had brought home. As each woman entered that beat-up trailer, Dimitri had prayed she'd be the one who'd make up for his mother's death.

When the women didn't work out—and they never did— he'd given his love to the stray dogs that ended up as roadkill on the nearby highway, to the old biddy in the next trailer who screamed at him if his ball landed near her tractor tire garden, to classroom teachers who had children of their own and didn't want another. But it had taken his experience with Galina before he'd finally learned the lesson he never let himself forget. His emotional survival depended on not falling in love.

Someday he hoped that would change. He'd love his kids, that was for damn sure. He'd never let them grow up as he had. As for his wife… That would take a while. But once he was sure she'd stick, he'd give it a try. For now, he intended to treat his search for her like he'd treat any other part of his business, which was why he'd hired the best matchmaker in the city. And why he had to get rid of Rosemarie Hathaway-Mazur…

* * *

Less than twenty-four hours later, Dimitri entered Probaka, his favorite restaurant, to do the job. Rose had screwup stamped all over her, and this was a big waste of time he didn't have to spare. As he headed to his regular table in the far corner of the well-lit bar, he called out a greeting in Russian to Paval, the owner. Dimitri had learned the language in college instead of from his Russian father, who'd only spoken Drunk. The old man had died from a combination of emphysema and cirrhosis of the liver when Dimitri was twenty. He had yet to shed a tear.

He made a quick call to Caleb Crenshaw, the Stars' running back, and another to Phil Tyree in New Orleans. The alarm on his watch buzzed just as he finished. Nine o'clock. He looked up, and sure enough, Rose Mazur was heading toward him. But it was the blond knockout at her side who claimed his attention. Whoa… Where had this one come from? Her short, straight hair fell in a trendy cut to her jaw. She had perfectly balanced features and a long, leggy figure. So, Rose hadn't been all talk.

His matchmaker was half a head shorter than the woman she'd brought to meet him. Her tangle of brown hair gleamed around her small head. The short white jacket she wore with a lime green sundress was a definite improvement over yesterday's ensemble, but she still looked like a scatterbrained tree fairy. He rose as she performed the introductions.

"Gwen, I'd like you to meet Dimitri Belikov. Dimitri, this is Gwen Phelps."

Gwen Phelps looked him over with a pair of intelligent brown eyes that tilted attractively down at the corners. "A pleasure," she said in a deep, low voice. "Rose's told me all about you."

"I'm glad to hear it. That means we can talk about you, which I can see right away will be a lot more interesting." It was a corny line, and he thought he heard a snort, but when he shot a quick glance at Rose, he saw in her expression only eagerness to please.

"Somehow I doubt that." Gwen slipped gracefully into the chair he held out for her. The woman oozed class. Rose tugged on the opposite chair, but it caught on the table leg. Concealing his annoyance, he reached over to free it. She was a walking disaster, and he regretted ordering her to sit with them, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time. When he'd decided to hire a matchmaker, he'd also promised he'd make the process efficient. He'd already sat through a couple of Power Matches introductions. Even before the drinks had arrived, he'd known neither woman was right for him, but he'd wasted a couple of hours getting rid of them. This one, however, showed definite promise.

Spiridon came over from the bar to take their orders. Gwen asked for club soda, Rose for something terrifying called a green phantom. She regarded him with the bright, too-eager expression of a dog owner waiting for her prized pooch to perform his tricks. So much for expecting her to lead the conversation. "Are you a native Chicagoan, Gwen?" he asked.

"I grew up in Rockford, but I've been in the city for years. Bucktown."

Bucktown was a near north neighborhood popular with the younger crowd. He'd lived there for a while himself, and they exchanged general Bucktown chat, which was exactly the sort of getting nowhere bullshit he'd wanted to avoid. He shot Miss Matchmaker a look. She wasn't stupid, and she took the hint.

"You'll be interested to know that Gwen's a psychologist. She's one of the country's leading authorities on sex surrogates."

That got his attention. He suppressed every locker room comment that sprang into his head. "An unusual field of study."

"Sex surrogacy is very misunderstood," the beautiful psychologist replied. "When it's properly used, it can be a wonderful therapeutic tool. I've made it my mission to bring it out from the shadows."

She began giving him an overview of her profession. She was good-humored, sharp, and sexy. God, was she sexy. He'd way underestimated Rose Mazur's matchmaking skills. Just as he began to relax into the conversation, however, Rose glanced at her watch and rose. "Time's up," she announced, in a chipper voice that set his teeth on edge.

The sexy psychologist came to her feet with a smile. "It's been lovely meeting you, Dimitri."

"My pleasure." Since he was the one who'd set the time limit, he concealed his irritation. He'd never expected a goof-ball like Rose to produce a stunner like this first time up at bat. Gwen gave Rose a quick hug, smiled at him again, and made her way out of the restaurant. Rose settled back into her chair, took a sip from her green phantom, then dug into her tote, this one turquoise blue with sequined palm trees. Seconds later, he was gazing at a contract identical to the one she'd left on his desk yesterday.

"I guarantee a minimum of two introductions a month." A springy lock of hair fell over her forehead. "I charge't-ten thousand dollars for six months." He didn't miss either the stammer or the high color rising in those chipmunk cheeks. Rose was going for the gusto. "Normally, the fee would include a session with an image consultant, but…" Her gaze took in his haircut, touched up every two weeks at eighty bucks a pop, his black Versace dress shirt, and pale gray Joseph Abboud slacks. "I, uh, think we can dispense with that."

Damn right they could. Dimitri had crap taste when it came to clothes, but image was everything in his profession, and just because he didn't give a damn what he wore didn't mean his clients felt the same way. A very gay, very discriminating wardrobe consultant purchased everything Dimitri wore, and he'd forbidden Dimitri to match up any shirts, pants, or ties that weren't already coordinated on the charts hanging in his closet.

"Ten thousand is steep for someone with no track record," he said.

"Like you, I believe in charging what I'm worth." Her eyes hung up on his mouth.

He suppressed a smile. Rose needed to practice her poker face. "I've already paid through the nose for my contract with Tasha Ozera."

The small cupid's bow at the center of her top lip grew a little pale, but she had game. "And how many women has she introduced you to like Gwen?"

She had him there, and this time he didn't hide his smile. Instead, he picked up the contract and started to read. The ten thousand dollars was a bluff, nothing more than wishful thinking on her part. Still, there was Gwen Phelps. He scanned the two pages. He could lowball her, but how far did he want to go? The art of the deal required that everybody come out feeling like a winner. Otherwise, resentment got in the way of performance.

He pulled out his Mont Blanc and began making modifications, scratching through a clause here and there, amending another, adding one of his own. Finally, he slid the papers back to her. "Five thousand up front. I only fork over the balance if you've found the right woman."

The flecks of gold in her brown eyes flashed like the glitter embedded in a kid's yo-yo. "That's unacceptable. You're practically asking me to work for free."

"Five thousand dollars isn't exactly chicken feed. You have no track record with someone like me."

"And yet I brought you Gwen."

"How do I know she's not all you've got? There's a big difference between talking a good game and playing one." He flicked his thumb toward the contract. "The ball's yours."

She snatched up the pages and glowered as she scanned the changes he'd made, but finally she signed, as he'd known she would. He did the same, then kicked back in his chair and studied her. "Hand over Gwen Phelps's phone number. I'll set up the next date myself."

She tugged on her bottom lip, revealing small, white teeth.

"I have to check with her first. It's an agreement I make with all the women I introduce."

"Sensible. But I'm not too worried."

As she reached for her cell, he glanced at his watch. He was tired. He'd spent the day in Cleveland, and he still needed to make a quick stop at Waterworks to see if he could pick up any new scuttlebutt on Adrian Ivashkov. Tomorrow he was scheduled from breakfast straight through until midnight. Friday, he had an early morning flight to Phoenix and, the following week, trips to Tampa and Baltimore. If he had a wife, his overnight case would be packed when he needed it, and he'd be able to find something other than beer in the refrigerator after a late-night flight. He'd also have somebody to talk over his day with, a chance to let down his guard without worrying about the country twang that crept into his speech when he was tired, or inadvertently dropping an elbow on the table while he was eating a sandwich, or any of the other crap he always had to be aware of. Most of all, he'd have somebody who'd stick.

"Gwen, it's Rose. Thanks again for agreeing to meet Dimitri on such short notice." She shot him a pointed look. Rosemarie was chastising him. "He's asked for your phone number. I happen to know he's planning a dinner date at"—another pointed look tossed his way—"Charlie Trotter's."

He wanted to laugh, but he deadpanned her so she didn't get too full of herself.

She paused, listened, and nodded. He pulled out his cell and paged through the list of calls that had come in while he was talking to Gwen. It wasn't quite nine o'clock in Denver. He still had time to check in with Jamal to see how his hamstring was coming along.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I'll pass it on. Thanks." She flipped her cell closed, slipped it into her tote, then gazed at him across the table. "Gwen liked you. But only as a friend."

For one of the few times in his life, he was struck speechless.

"I was afraid that might happen," she said briskly. "The twenty-minute time frame didn't exactly give you a chance to put your best foot forward."

He stared at her, not quite able to believe what he was hearing.

"Gwen asked me to pass on her best wishes. She thinks you're very good-looking, and she's sure you won't have any trouble finding someone more suitable."

Gwen Phelps had rejected him?

"We might…" Rose said thoughtfully, "… need to start looking a little lower on the female totem pole."

 **I know I know Who the hell is Gwen?! Well I didn't feel comfortable putting anyone from VA in that role so I made someone up. Anyway thanks for the positive reviews and hopefully ill update shortly!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hi guys! So to answer a few or your reviews YES YES YES this is a romitri! But as I said this isn't your normal fanfic as in they don't knowingly fall for each other straight away! It's going to take some time but don't let that get you down it just makes it all the more sweeter when they do and they have some ups and downs and adventures in between. So anyway here is another 6000+ word chapter enjoy!**

 **PS as usual and everyone knows I don't own anything!**

Chapter Three

The midnight blue Jaguar crept around the corner of Hoyne onto the narrow Wicker Park street. The woman behind the wheel peered at the house numbers through a pair of rimless Chanel sunglasses with tiny interlocking rhinestone Cs at the hinges. Strictly speaking, they were fashion sunglasses, which meant they barely had enough UV protection for even a cloudy day, but they looked incredible against her pale skin and cloud of dark hair, and Tasha Ozera didn't believe in sacrificing style for function. Not even her approaching birthday—her thirty-seventh to close acquaintances, her forty-second as her mother remembered it—would let her consider trading in her Christian Louboutin stilettos for Easy Spirits. Her ex-husband had said that Tasha's inky hair, winter white complexion, startling blue eyes, and whippet-thin body made her look like Snow White after a few months on the South Beach diet.

She slowed as she found what she was looking for on the tree-lined street. She'd never seen a more likely candidate for a teardown than this tiny frame house, which was painted a fading robin's egg blue with peeling periwinkle trim. A blistered black wrought-iron fence surrounded a patch of yard the size of her bathroom. The place looked like a gardening shed for one of the elegant two-story brick rehabs rising on each side of it. How had it managed to escape the wrecking ball that had already claimed most of Wicker Park's shabbier homes?

Tasha had spotted the Perfect for You folder on Dimitri Belikov's desk when she'd stopped by yesterday, and her formidable competitive instincts had gone into hyperdrive. In the past year, she'd lost two big clients to new agencies, and one husband to a twenty-three-year-old event planner. Failure had a smell to it, and she'd work herself to the bone before she ever let that smell cling to her. A few hours' research had unearthed the information that Perfect for You was simply a new name for Marriages by Myrna, a small-time operation that had been little more than a curiosity. The granddaughter had taken it over after Myrna Hathaway's death. A little more digging had revealed that this same granddaughter had gone to college with Christian's wife, Lissa. Tasha had let herself relax a little. Naturally Dimitri would feel obligated to give the girl a courtesy interview if his client's wife requested it, but he was too demanding to work with an amateur. She'd gone to bed with an easy mind… and had a painfully erotic dream about her prized client. Not that she'd ever consider acting on it. A fling with Belikov would be exciting, but she never let her personal life interfere with business.

Unfortunately, this morning's phone call had reignited her anxiety. Spiridon, the bartender at Probka's, was one of many well-placed service people who received lavish gifts from her in return for useful information, and he'd reported that a matchmaker named Rosemarie had shown up last night with a beautiful woman in tow whom she'd introduced to Dimitri. Tasha had set off for Wicker Park as soon as she could get away. She needed to see how big a threat the woman posed, but this derelict house proved that Perfect for You was a business only in Ms. Mazur's imagination. Belikov was simply making nice to please Christian's wife.

Feeling marginally reassured, she headed south toward the Loop for her monthly dermabrasion. She spent vast amounts of money keeping her complexion unlined and her body reed thin. Age might add to a man's power, but it stole from a woman's, and an hour later, makeup reapplied, complexion glowing, she entered the Power Matches offices on the first floor of a white-painted brick Victorian not far from the Newberry Library.

Inna, her receptionist-secretary looked guilty and quickly got off the phone. More child care problems. How could women ever get ahead when the burden of child care always fell on them? Tasha took in the calm elegance of the open office area with its cool green walls and low, Asian-inspired black couches. Her three assistants were at their desks, which were set apart with stylish parchment screens set in black lacquer frames. Ranging in age from twenty-two to twenty-nine, her assistants scouted the city's trendiest clubs and handled all the initial interviews. Tasha had hired them for their connections, brains, and looks. They were required to wear black on the job: simple, elegant dresses; slacks with classic tops; and well-fitting jackets. She had more latitude, and today she'd chosen pearl gray Ralph Lauren: a summer-weight cardigan, tailored blouse, pencil skirt, and pearls, all set off with lavender stilettos that had a girly bow across the vamp.

There were no clients in the office, so she made the dreaded announcement. "It's that day of the week, everybody. Chop, chop. Let's get the agony over with."

Iris Kane groaned. "I'm getting my period."

"You were getting your period last week," Tasha replied. "No excuses." Only her controller and the computer guru who ran the Power Matches Web site were exempt from this weekly ritual, since they didn't deal directly with clients. Besides, they were men, and didn't that just say it all?

Tasha walked toward her private office. "You, too, Inna."

"I'm the receptionist," Inna protested. "I don't have to be in the clubs at night."

Tasha ignored her. They all wanted the prestige of working for Power Matches, but nobody wanted the hard work and the discipline that went along with it. Discipline turns the dream into reality. How many times had she said those words to the women she mentored at the Community Small Business Initiative? And how many times had they chosen to ignore her?

Mirabel Conta had a chipper smile on her face, and Marcella didn't seem too worried, but if Iris kept frowning that way she'd need Botox before she hit thirty. Inside Tasha's office, half a dozen curry-colored ceramic pieces provided the only decorative accessories in a space dominated by glass, straight lines, and hard surfaces. Her personal preferences ran toward softer, more feminine interiors, but she believed a woman's office should project authority. Men could surround themselves with all the bowling trophies and family photos they wanted, but female executives didn't have that luxury.

As she made her way into her private bathroom, she heard the rustle of shoes and jackets being removed, the chink of discarded belts and bracelets. She slid the glass-and-chrome precision scale from beneath the pedestal sink with the pointed toe of her lavender Christian Louboutins, then picked it up and carried it out to the black marble office floor. By the time she extracted the chart she needed from her desk, Iris had stripped down to a navy bra and panty set.

"Who's brave enough to go first?"

"I will." Marcella Badica, a willowy Scandinavian beauty, mounted the scale.

"One hundred and twenty." Tasha noted the weight on her chart. "You've picked up a pound since last month, but with your height, that's not a problem. Your manicure, though…" She gestured toward the chipped mocha polish on Marcella's index finger. "Honestly, Marcella, how many times do I have to tell you? Appearances are everything. Get it fixed. Inna, you're next."

Inna's extra pounds were a foregone conclusion, but she had fabulous skin, a marvelous touch with makeup, and a way of putting clients at ease. Besides, the reception desk was high enough to cover the worst of her chub. "If you ever want to get another husband…"

"I know, I know," Inna said. "One of these days I'll get serious."

Mirabel, always a team player, took the heat off her. "My turn," she chirped. Flipping her silky black hair over one shoulder, she stepped on the scale.

"One hundred and two pounds," Tasha noted. "Excellent."

"It's a lot easier when you're Asian," Iris said sullenly. "Asian women are small-boned. I'm Jewish."

As she reminded them at every weigh-in. But Iris had a degree from Brown and connections to some of the wealthiest families on the North Shore. With her great hair—incredible caramel highlights—and her infallible eye for fashion, she radiated a Jennifer Aniston kind of sex appeal. Unfortunately, she didn't have Aniston's body. Tasha gestured toward the scale. "Let's put you out of your misery."

Iris balked. "I want to go on record. I find this demeaning and insulting."

"Possibly. But it's also for your own good, so up you go."

She reluctantly climbed on. Tasha noted the number with a sigh. "One hundred and twenty-seven pounds." Unlike Inna, Iris had no desk to hide behind. She was out in the clubs representing Power Matches. "Everybody else, back to work. Iris, we have to talk."

Iris hooked a lock of that gleaming hair behind her ear and looked sullen. Mirabel shot her a sympathetic glance then filed out with the others. Iris picked up her black Banana Republic sheath and held it in front of her. "This is discriminatory and illegal."

"My lawyer disagrees, and the employment contract you signed is clear. We talked about this before I hired you, remember? Personal appearance is paramount in this business, and I put my money where my standards are. No one offers the bonuses and benefits that I do. In my mind that means I deserve to be a little demanding."

"But I'm the best associate you have. I want to be judged by my work, not by how much I weigh."

"Then grow a penis." Iris still didn't understand that Tasha had their best interests at heart. "Did you even try?"

"Yes, but—"

"How tall are you?" Tasha knew the answer, but she wanted Iris to come to terms with this herself.

"Five feet four."

"Five feet four and one hundred twenty-seven pounds." She leaned against the hard glass ridge of her desktop. "I'm four inches taller. Let's see how much I weigh." Ignoring the resentment in Iris' eyes, she slipped off her shoes and sweater, dropped the pearls on her desk, and stepped on the scale. "One hundred and twenty-two. I'm up a bit. Oh, well. No carbs for me tonight." She stepped back into her shoes. "Do you see how easy it is? If I don't like what I see on the scale, I cut back."

Iris collapsed on the couch, her eyes filling with tears. "I'm not you."

Women who cried on the job reinforced every negative stereotype about females and the workplace, but Iris hadn't developed the hard shell of experience, and Tasha knelt at her side, trying to make her understand. "You're a terrific worker, Iris, and you have a great future. Don't let obesity stand in your way. Studies show that overweight women receive fewer job promotions and make less money. It's one more way the business world is stacked against us. But at least our weight is something we can control."

Iris regarded her mulishly. "One twenty-seven isn't obese."

"No, but it's not perfect, is it? And perfection is what we all need to strive for. Now go into my bathroom and take a few minutes to pull yourself together. Then get back to work."

"No!" Red-faced, Iris leaped to her feet. "No! I do a good job for you, and I don't have to put up with this. I'm quitting."

"Now, Iris—"

"I hate working for you! Nobody can ever live up to your expectations. Well, I don't care anymore. You might be rich and successful, but you don't have a life. Everybody knows that, and I feel sorry for you."

The words stung, but Tasha didn't flinch. "I have a very good life," she said coolly. "And I won't apologize for demanding excellence. Obviously, you're not prepared to give it, so clear out your desk." She walked to the door and held it open.

Iris was crying and furious, but she didn't have the nerve to say more. Clutching her dress in front of her, she rushed from the office. Tasha closed the door carefully, making sure it didn't slam, then leaned back and shut her eyes. Iris' angry words had struck home. By the age of forty-two, Tasha had expected to have everything she wanted, but despite all the money she'd made and the accolades she'd received, the pride of accomplishment eluded her. She had dozens of friends, but no soul-deep friendships, and she had a failed marriage. How could that have happened when she'd waited so long and chosen so carefully?

Isaiah had been her perfect match—a power match— urbane, wealthy, and successful. They'd been one of Chicago's A-list couples, invited to all the best parties, chairing an important benefit. The marriage should have worked, but it had barely lasted a year. Tasha would never forget what he'd said when he'd left. "I'm exhausted, Tasha… I'm too worried about having my dick cut off to get a good night's sleep."

Too bad she hadn't done just that because, three weeks later, he'd moved in with a bubble-headed twenty-three-year-old event planner who had breast implants and a giggle.

Tasha splashed half a bottle of Pellegrino into one of the Villeroy & Boch goblets Inna kept by her desk. Maybe someday Iris would understand what a mistake she'd made by not taking advantage of Tasha's willingness to mentor her. Or maybe not. Tasha wasn't exactly drowning in thank-you notes from either former employees or the women she tried to mentor.

Dimitri Belikov's file lay on her desk, and she sat down to study it. But as she gazed at the folder, she saw the gold teapot wallpaper in the kitchen of the Terre Haute house where she'd grown up. Her working-class parents had been content with their lives—the discount store clothes, the imitation wood end tables, the mass-produced oil paintings bought in a famous artists' sale at the Holiday Inn. But Tasha had always craved more. She'd used her allowance to buy magazines like Vogue and Town & Country. She'd posted photographs of beautiful houses and elegant furniture on her bedroom bulletin board. In junior high school, she'd terrified her parents with the crying jags she'd thrown if she didn't get an A on a test. Throughout her childhood, she'd ignored the fact that she'd inherited her father's eyes and coloring and pretended she was a victim of one of those freakish hospital mix-ups.

Straightening in her chair, she took another sip of Pelle-grino and turned her attention back to where it belonged, finding Dimitri Belikov the perfect wife. She might have lost two prominent clients and an equally prominent husband, but she wouldn't fail again. Nothing and no one would keep her from making this match.

The deep male voice rumbled its displeasure into the phone. "I've got a call coming in. You have thirty seconds."

"Not enough time," Rose replied. "We need to sit down together so I can get a more specific idea of what you're looking for." She didn't waste her breath asking him to complete the questionnaire she'd spent so many hours perfecting. The only way she'd get the information she needed was to pull it out of him.

"Let's put it this way," he retorted. "My future wife's idea of a good time is sitting in Soldier Field in January with the -wind blowing in off the lake at thirty knots. She can feed half a dozen college athletes a spaghetti dinner with no warning and play eighteen holes of golf from the men's tees without embarrassing herself. She's sexy as hell, knows how to dress, and thinks fart jokes are funny. Anything else?"

"It's just so darned hard to find women who've had lobot-omies these days. Still, if that's what you want…"

A muffled snort. Whether it was displeasure or laughter, she couldn't tell. "Would tomorrow morning be convenient?" she asked, chirpy as one of the cheerleaders he'd undoubtedly dated by the gross in his college playing days.

"No."

"Then name the time and place."

She heard a combined sigh of resignation and exasperation. "I have to see a client in Elmhurst in an hour. You can ride out there with me. Meet me in front of my office at two. And if you're not on time, I'm leaving without you."

"I'll be there."

She hung up and grinned at the woman sitting across the green metal bistro table from her. "Bingo."

Gwen Phelps Bingham set down her iced tea glass. "You talked him into filling out the questionnaire?"

"Sort of," Rose replied. "I'll have to interview him in his car, but it's better than nothing. I can't go any further until I get a more specific idea of what he wants."

"Boobs and blond hair. Be sure and give him my best." Gwen smiled and gazed toward the collection of weedy day-lilies that formed a border between her yard and the alley behind her Wrigleyville duplex. "I've got to admit, he's quite a hottie… if you like your men rough and tumble, but oh so rich and successful."

"I heard that." Gwen's husband, Ian, poked his head through the open patio door. "Rose, that big fruit basket doesn't even come close to making up for what you put me through last week."

"How about the year of free babysitting I promised?"

Gwen patted her nearly flat tummy. "You've got to admit, Ian, it was worth it just for that."

He wandered outside. "I'm not admitting anything. I've seen pictures of that guy, and he's still got hair."

Ian was more sensitive about his thinning hair than he should be, and Gwen regarded him affectionately. "I married you for your brain, not your hair."

"Dimitri Belikov graduated at the top of his law class." Rose said, just to make trouble. "So he's definitely got a brain, too. Which is why he was so captivated by our Gwennie."

Ian refused to bite. "Not to mention the minor fact that you told him she was a sex surrogate."

"Wrong. I told him she was an authority on sex surrogates. And I read her master's thesis, so I know it's true."

"Funny you neglected to mention she's now an elementary school psychologist."

"Considering everything else I neglected to mention, it seemed a minor point."

Rose had met Gwen and Ian right after college when they'd lived in the same apartment building. Despite his thinning hair, Ian was a great-looking guy, and Gwen adored him. If they weren't so much in love, Rose would never have considered asking to borrow Gwen for the evening, but Dimitri had backed her into a corner, and she'd been desperate. Although she had several women in mind for him to meet, she hadn't been certain any of them would score the knockout punch she needed to ensure that he'd sign her contract. Then she'd thought of Gwen, a woman who'd been born with that mysterious gene that made men whimper just from looking at her.

Ian was still feeling put-upon. "The guy's rich, successful, and good-looking."

"So are you," Gwen said loyally, "except for being rich, but we'll get there someday."

Ian's home-based software company had finally begun to show a profit, which was why they were about to move into their first house. Rose experienced one of those pangs of envy that hit her every other minute when she was with them. She wanted a relationship like this. Once she'd thought she had it with Jessie, which proved the folly of believing in following her heart.

She rose, patted Gwen's stomach, and gave Ian an extra hug. Not only had he lent her his wife, but he was also designing

Rose's Web site. Rose knew she needed a presence on the Web, but she didn't intend to turn Perfect for You into an Internet dating service. Nana had been vehement on the subject. "Three-quarters of the people who sign up for those things are already married, sex deviants, or in prison." Nana had exaggerated. Rose knew couples who'd found love online, but she also didn't believe any computer in the world could beat the personal touch.

She freshened up her makeup in Gwen's bathroom, checked her short khaki skirt and mint green blouse for stains, and set off downtown. She reached Dimitri's office building a few minutes early, so she ducked into the Starbucks across the street and ordered an overpriced mocha Frappuccino. As she came back outside, she saw him emerge with a cell phone pressed to his ear. He wore aviators, a light gray polo shirt, and slacks. An expensive-looking sports coat dangled over one shoulder from his thumb. Men like him should be required by law to carry a heart defibrillator.

He headed toward the curb, where a shiny black Cadillac Escalade with darkened windows sat with its motor idling. As he reached for the passenger-door handle, he didn't even glance around for her, and she realized he'd forgotten she existed. The story of her life.

"Wait!" She made a dash across the street, dodging a taxi and a red Subaru. Horns blared, brakes squealed, and Belikov looked up. He flipped his cell shut as she finally stepped up on the curb.

"I haven't seen anybody run a pattern like that since Bobby Tom Denton retired from the Stars."

"You were going to leave without me."

"I didn't see you."

"You didn't look!"

"Things on my mind." At least he held the back door of the rapmobile open for her, then climbed in at her side. The driver moved up the passenger seat for more legroom before he turned to check her out.

The driver was big and terrifyingly buff. Tattoos decorated a massive set of arms and the wrist he'd draped over the steering wheel. With his shaved head, wise-guy eyes, and crooked smile, he had a Bruce Willis's evil twin thing going that was sexy in a very scary sort of way. "Where we off to?" he asked.

"Elmhurst," Dimitri said. "Crenshaw wants me to see his new house."

As a Stars fan, Rose recognized the name of the team's running back.

"The Sox are up two-one," the driver said. "You want to listen in the back?"

"Yeah, but unfortunately I have some business I promised to take care of. Rosemarie, this is Ivan Zeklos, the best linebacker who never played for Kansas City."

"Second-round draft pick out of Arizona State," Ivan said as he pulled the SUV into the traffic. "Played two years for the Steelers. My right leg was crushed in a motorcycle accident the day I got traded to the Chiefs."

"That must have been terrible."

"You win some, you lose some, right, boss?"

"He calls me that to piss me off."

Ivan studied her in the rearview mirror. "So you're the matchmaker?"

"Marriage facilitator." Dimitri swiped her mocha Frappuccino.

"Hey!"

He took a drag on the straw, and Ivan chuckled. "Marriage facilitator, huh? You got your work cut out for you with the boss, Rosie. He has a long history of lovin' and leavin'." He made a left on LaSalle. "But here's what's ironic… The last woman he was interested in—some pooh-bah in the mayor's office—dumped him. How's that for a laugh?"

Dimitri yawned and stretched his legs. Despite his pricey wardrobe, she could easily imagine him in jeans, a ratty T-shirt, and scuffed-up work boots.

Ivan turned onto Congress. "She dumped him because of the way he screwed around on her."

Rose's stomach sank. "He was unfaithful?"

"Big-time." Ivan made a lane change. "He kept humpin' his cell phone."

Dimitri took another swig of the Frappuccino. "He's bitter because I'm successful, and he's screwed up for life."

No response from the front seat. What sort of weird relationship was this?

A cell rang. Not the same cell Dimitri had been talking on a few minutes earlier. This one came from the pocket of his sports coat. Apparently, he was ambi-phonorous.

"Belikov."

Rose took advantage of the distraction to reclaim her Frappuccino. As she closed her lips around the straw, she had the depressing thought that this would probably be as close as she'd get to swapping spit with a multimillionaire hunk.

"The restaurant business is littered with the dead bodies of great athletes, Rafe. It's your money, so I can only advise you, but…"

The downside of being a matchmaker meant that she might never have another date. When she met attractive single men, she had to turn them into clients, and she couldn't let her personal life complicate that. Not a problem in this particular case… She gazed at Dimitri. Just being near so much unbridled macho made her want to break out in hives. He even smelled sexy, like expensive sheets, good soap, and musky pheromones. The Frappuccino sliding down her throat didn't do much to cool her hot thoughts, and she faced the sad truth that she was sex starved. Two miserable years since she'd broken her engagement to Jessie… Way too long to sleep alone.

The opening bars of the William Tell Overture intruded. Dimitri had the gall to frown as she retrieved her phone. "Hello."

"Rosemarie, it's your mother."

She sank back into the seat, cursing herself for not remembering to turn the thing off.

Dimitri took advantage of her distraction to reclaim the Frappuccino while he continued his own conversation. "… it's all a matter of setting financial priorities. Once your family's secure, you can afford to take a flyer on a restaurant."

"I tracked the application through FedEx," Janine said, "so I know you got it. Have you filled it out yet?"

"Interesting question," Rose chirped. "Let me call you back later so we can discuss it."

"Let's discuss it now."

"You're a prince, Raoul. And thanks for last night. You were the best." She disconnected, then turned off her phone. There'd be hell to pay, but she'd worry about that later.

Dimitri ended his own call and regarded her through those chocolate brown, country boy's eyes. "If you're going to program your cell to play music, at least make it original."

"Thanks for the advice." She gestured toward the Frappuccino. "Luckily for you, there's only a slight chance I have diphtheria. Let me tell you, those skin lesions are a bitch."

The corner of his mouth kicked up. "Put the drink on my bill."

"You don't have a bill." She thought of the parking garage where she'd once again been forced to leave Sherman since she hadn't known how long they'd be gone. "Although I'm starting one today." She retrieved the questionnaire from her tropical print Target tote.

He eyed the papers with distaste. "I told you what I'm looking for."

"I know. Soldier Field, fart jokes, yada yada. But I need a little more than that. For example, what age group are you thinking of? And please don't say nineteen, blond, and busty."

"He's been there and done that, right, boss?" Ivan chimed in from the front seat. "For the last ten years."

Dimitri ignored him. "I've outgrown my interest in nineteen-year-olds. Let's say twenty-two to thirty. Nothing older. I want kids, but not for a while."

Which made Rose, at thirty-one, feel ancient. "What if she's divorced and already has children?"

"I haven't thought about it."

"Have you considered religious preference?"

"No fruitcakes. Other than that, I'm open-minded."

Rose made a note. "Would you date a woman who doesn't have a college degree?"

"Sure. What I don't want is a woman without a personality."

"If you had to describe your physical type in three words, what words would you choose?"

"Thin, toned, and hot," Ivan said from the front seat. "He's doesn't like a whole lot of booty."

Rose shifted her own booty deeper into the seat.

Dimitri ran his thumb over the metal band of his watch, a TAG Heuer, she noticed, similar to the one her brother Eddie had bought for himself when he'd been named St. Louis's top heart surgeon. "Gwen Phelps isn't in the phone book."

"Yes, I know. What are your turnoffs?"

"I'm going to find her."

"Why would you want to?" Rose said a little too hastily. "She's not interested."

"You really don't think I can be put off that easily, do you?"

She made a business of clicking her pen and perusing the questionnaire. "Your turnoffs?"

"Flakes. Gigglers. Too much perfume. Cubs fans."

Her head shot up. "I love the Cubbies."

"Surprise, surprise."

She decided to let that one pass.

"You never dated a redhead," Ivan offered.

Dimitri eyed the back of Ivan's neck where a Maori warrior's tattoo curled into his shirt collar. "Maybe I should let my faithful manservant answer the rest of your questions, since he seems to have all the answers."

"I'm saving her time," Ivan replied. "She brings you a redhead, you'll give her grief. Look for women with class, Rosie. That's most important. The sophisticated types who went to boarding schools and speak French. She has to be the real thing because he can spot a phony a mile away. And he likes them athletic."

"Of course he does," she said dryly. "Athletic, domestic, gorgeous, brilliant, socially connected, and pathologically submissive. It'll be a snap."

"You forgot hot." Dimitri smiled. "And defeatist thinking is for losers. If you want to be a success in this world, Rose, you need a positive attitude. Whatever the client wants, you get it for him. First rule of a successful business."

"Uh-huh. What about career women?"

"I don't see how that would work."

"The kind of potential mate you're describing isn't going to be sitting around waiting for her prince to show up. She's heading a major corporation. In between those Victoria's Secret modeling gigs."

He lifted an eyebrow. "Attitude, Rose. Attitude."

"Right."

"A career woman can't fly across the country with me on two hours' notice to entertain a client's wife," he said.

"Two on, no outs." Ivan flipped up the volume.

As the men listened to the game, Rose contemplated her notes with a sinking heart. How was she going to find a woman who met all these criteria? She couldn't. But then neither could Tasha Ozera, because a woman like this didn't exist.

What if Rose took a different path? What if she found the woman Dimitri Belikov really needed instead of the woman he thought he needed? She doodled in the margin of the questionnaire. What made this guy tick besides money and conquest? Who was the real man behind the multiple cell phones? On the surface, he was all polish, but she knew from Lissa that he'd grown up with an abusive father. Apparently, he'd started rooting around in the neighbors' garbage looking for things to sell before he could read, and he'd been working ever since.

They headed north toward the prosperous suburb of Elmhurst. Dimitri consulted his BlackBerry. "I'll be at Probka's tomorrow night at six. Bring on your next candidate."

She turned her doodle into a stop sign. "Why now?"

"Because I just rearranged my schedule."

"No, I mean why have you decided now that you want to get married?"

"Because it's time."

Before she could ask what that meant, he was back on his cell. "I know you're nearly capped out, Ron, but I also know you don't want to lose a great running back. Tell Mia she's going to have to make some adjustments."

And so, apparently, was Rose.

Ivan sent her back to the city in a cab paid for by Dimitri. By the time she'd retrieved Sherman and driven home, it was after five. She let herself in through the back door and tossed her things down on the kitchen table, a pine drop leaf Nana had bought in the 1980s when she'd gone big on country-style decorating. The appliances were vintage but still serviceable, just like the farm-table chairs with their faded mattress-ticking pillows. Although Rose had lived in the house for three months, she'd always think of it as Nana's, and tossing out the dusty grapevine wreath along with the ruffled cranberry curtain at the kitchen window were about as much as she'd done to update the eating area.

Some of her happiest childhood memories had taken place in this kitchen, especially during the summers when she'd come for a week to visit. She and Nana used to sit at this very table, talking about everything. Her grandmother had never laughed at her daydreams, not even when Rose had turned eighteen and announced that she intended to study theater and become a famous actress. Nana dealt only in possibility. It hadn't occurred to her to point out that Rose possessed not the fine talent to hit it big on Broadway.

The doorbell rang, and she went to answer it. Years earlier, Nana had converted the living and dining rooms into the reception and office areas for Marriages by Myrna. Like her grandmother, Rose lived in the rooms upstairs. Since Nana's death, Rose had repainted and modernized the dining room office space with a computer and a more efficient desk arrangement.

The old front door had a center oval of frosted glass, but the beveled border allowed her to see the distorted figure of Mr. Dashkov. She wished she could pretend she wasn't home, but he lived across the alley, so he'd seen her pull up in Sherman. Although Wicker Park had lost many of its elderly to gentrification, a few holdouts still lived in the houses where they'd raised their families. Others had moved into a nearby senior living facility, and still others lived on the less expensive fringe streets. Every one of them had known her grandmother.

"Hello, Mr. Dashkov."

"Rosemarie." He had a lean, wiry build and gray caterpillar eyebrows with a Mephistophelean slant. The hair missing from his head sprouted copiously from his ears, but he was a natty dresser, wearing long-sleeved checked sports shirts and polished oxfords even on the warmest days.

He glared at her from beneath his satanic eyebrows. "You was supposed to call me. I left three messages."

"You were next on my list," she lied. "I've been out all day."

"And don't I know it. Running around like a chicken with your head cut off. Myrna used to stay put so people could find her." He had the accent of a born-and-bred Chicagoan and the aggression of a man who'd spent his life driving a truck for the gas company. He bulldozed past her into the house. "What are you going to do about my situation?"

"Mr. Dashkov, your agreement was with my grandmother."

"My agreement was with Marriages by Myrna, 'Seniors Are My Specialty,' or have you forgotten your grammie's slogan?"

How could she forget, when it was plastered over every one of the dozens of yellowed notepads Nana had scattered around the house? "That business no longer exists."

"Bull pippy." He made a sharp gesture around the reception area, where Rose had exchanged Nana's wooden geese, silk flower arrangements, and milk-can end tables for a few pieces of Mediterranean-style pottery. Since she couldn't afford to replace the ruffled chairs and couches, she'd added pillows in a cheery red, cobalt, and yellow Provencal print that complemented the creamy new buttercup paint.

"Addin' some doodads don't change a thing," he said. "This is still a matchmaker business, and me and your grammie had a contract. With a guarantee."

"You signed that contract in 1989," she pointed out, not for the first time.

"I paid her two hundred dollars. In cash."

"Since you and Mrs. Dashkov were together for almost fifteen years, I'd say you got your money's worth."

He whipped a dog-eared paper from his pants pocket and waved it at her. " 'Satisfaction guaranteed.' That's what this contract says. And I'm not satisfied. She 'went loony on me."

"I know you had a difficult time of it, and I'm sorry about Mrs. Dashkov's passing."

"Sorry don't cut the mustard. I didn't have satisfaction even when she was alive."

Rose couldn't believe she was arguing with an eighty-year-old about a two-hundred-dollar contract signed when Reagan was president. "You married Mrs. Dashkov of your own free will," she said as patiently as she could manage.

"Kids like you, they don't understand about customer satisfaction."

"That's not true, Mr. Dashkov."

"My nephew's a lawyer. I could sue."

She started to tell him to go ahead and try, but he was just cranky enough to do it. "Mr. Dashkov, how about this? I promise I'll keep my eyes open."

"I want a blonde."

She bit the inside of her cheek. "Gotcha."

"And not too young. None of them twenty-year-olds. I got a granddaughter twenty-two. Wouldn't look right."

"You're thinking… ?"

"Thirty'd be good. With a little meat on her bones."

"Anything else?"

"Catholic."

"Of course."

"And nice." A wistful expression softened the slant of those ferocious eyebrows. "Somebody nice."

She smiled despite herself. "I'll see what I can do."

When she finally managed to close the door behind him, she remembered there was a good reason she'd earned her reputation as the family's screwup. She had sucker written all over her.

And way too many clients living on Social Security.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Ivan readjusted the treadmill speed, slowing the pace. "Tell me more about Tasha Ozera." A bead of sweat trickled into the already damp neckband of Dimitri's faded Dolphins T-shirt as he set the barbell he'd been lifting back on the rack. "You met Rose. Do a one-eighty, and you've got Tasha."

"Rose's interesting. Kinda hard to get a read on her."

"She's a flake." Dimitri stretched out his arms. "I'd never have hired her if she hadn't struck it lucky with Gwen Phelps." Ivan chuckled. "You still can't believe you got rejected."

"I finally meet somebody intriguing, and she's not interested."

"Life's a bitch." The treadmill slowed to a stop. Ivan climbed off and picked up a towel from the uncarpeted living room floor.

Dimitri's Lincoln Park house still smelled like new construction, probably because it was. A sleek wedge of glass and stone, it jutted toward the shady street like the prow of a ship. Through the sweeping V of floor-to-ceiling living room windows, he could see sky, trees, a pair of restored nineteenth-century town houses across the way, and a well-maintained neighborhood park surrounded by an old iron fence. His rooftop deck—which, admittedly, he'd only visited twice— afforded a distant view of the Lincoln Park Lagoon.

Once he found a wife, he'd let her furnish the place. For now, he'd set up a gym in the otherwise empty living room, bought a state-of-the-art sound system, a bed with a Tempur-Pedic mattress, and a big-screen plasma TV for the media room downstairs. All of that, combined with hardwood and tumbled marble floors, custom-built cabinets, limestone bathrooms, and a kitchen outfitted with the latest in European-designed appliances made this the house he'd dreamed about since he was a kid.

He just wished he liked it more. Maybe he should have hired a decorator instead of waiting, but he'd done that with his old place—cost a fortune, too—and he hadn't liked the results. The interior might have been impressive, but he'd felt weird there, like a visitor in somebody else's house. He'd sold everything when he moved here so he could start new, but now he wished he'd held on to enough furniture to keep the place from echoing.

Ivan picked up a water bottle. "Word is, she's a ballbuster."

"Gwen?" Dimitri stepped on the treadmill.

"Tasha. High employee turnover rate."

"Seems like a good businesswoman to me. She also does some volunteer work mentoring other women."

"If she's so good, why aren't you letting her sit through any of her introductions like you made Rose do last week?"

"I tried once, but it didn't work. She's pretty wired, a little hard to take in big doses. But she's sent along some decent candidates, and she knows how to get the job done."

"That explains all those second dates you haven't asked anybody out on."

"Sooner or later I will."

Ivan wandered into the kitchen. He had a condo in

Wrigleyville, but sometimes came over here so they could work out together.

Dimitri turned up the treadmill speed. He and Ivan had been together almost six years now. After his motorcycle injury, Ivan had lost himself in drugs and self-pity, but Dimitri had admired him as a player, and he'd hired him to be a runner. Good runners tended to be former athletes, men the college players knew by reputation and trusted. Agents used them to bring potential clients to the table. Although Dimitri hadn't spelled it out, Ivan had known he had to get sober first, and that's what he'd done. Before long, his no-bullshit style had turned him into one of the best.

Ivan had started driving for him accidentally. Dimitri spent a lot of hours on Chicago's tollways, heading up to Halas Hall, out to Stars headquarters, or making endless trips to and from O'Hare. He hated wasting time stuck in traffic jams, and Ivan liked being behind the wheel, so Ivan'd started taking over when it was convenient for both of them. With Ivan driving, Dimitri could make phone calls, answer e-mail, and handle paperwork, although, just as frequently, they used their time to strategize, and this was where Ivan earned the six-figure income Dimitri paid him. Ivan's intimidating appearance hid a highly analytical mind—cool, focused, and unsentimental. He'd become Dimitri's closest friend, and the only person Dimitri completely trusted.

Ivan returned from the kitchen with a beer. "Your matchmaker doesn't like you."

"She doesn't have too."

"I think you amuse her, though."

"Amuse her?" Dimitri lost his rhythm. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Ask her, not me."

"I'm not asking her a damn thing."

"It'll be interesting to see who she comes up with next.

You sure didn't like that brunette Tasha introduced you to last week."

"Too much perfume, and she was hard to get rid of." He punched at the display, raising the treadmill's incline. "I guess I should make Tasha sit in on the introductions the same way I did with Rose, but Tasha takes over so much it's tough to get a good read."

"You should make Rose sit in on all of them. She doesn't seem to get on your nerves."

"What are you talking about? She sure as hell got on my nerves this afternoon—her and her questionnaire." His cell rang. Ivan tossed it to him. Dimitri checked the caller ID and hit the button. "Rocco… Exactly the man I want to talk to…"

How rich do you think he is?" Barrie Delshire's long brown hair swung around the perfect oval of her face, unlike Rose's hair, which continued to defy the new straightening product she'd obviously paid too much for.

"He's rich enough." Rose poked a curl behind her ear.

"That's cool. My last boyfriend still owes me fifty bucks, but he says he'll pay me back."

Barrie wasn't the brightest bulb in the Pottery Barn chandelier, but she was sweet, exquisitely beautiful, and her bustline alone should catch Dimitri's attention. Barrie didn't want to walk into the restaurant alone, so Rose had met up with her at a nearby convenience store. As they drew nearer to Probka's, a stylish, rail-thin woman with pale skin and inky hair turned from the window where she was perusing the menu to watch them approach. She wore a silky blue halter top that tied behind her neck, white slacks, and backless navy-and-white kitten-heeled slides. She gazed at Rose with an odd intensity, then turned her attention back to the menu.

Barrie flicked her hair. "Thanks again for arranging this. I'm so sick of dating losers."

"Dimitri definitely isn't a loser." Rose had been too nervous about tonight to eat, and as they entered the restaurant, the fragrant smells of garlic and fresh-baked bread made her mouth water. Dimitri sat at the same table he'd occupied when she'd introduced him to Gwen. Tonight, he wore an open-collar knit shirt a shade lighter than his thick, barely rumpled hair. As they got closer, she saw him pocket his BlackBerry.

He rose in an unconscious display of athletic grace—no fumbling with the chair or bumping against the table for this dude. Rose made the introductions. He wasn't easy to read, but as she watched him take in Barrie's long hair and amazing breasts, she could tell he was interested.

He held out the chair next to him for her, leaving Rose to fend for herself. Barrie gave him an alluring, moist-lipped smile. "You're just as amazing-looking as Rose said you were."

Dimitri shot Rose an amused glance. "Did she now?"

Rose ordered herself not to flush. She'd been doing her job, and that was all.

The conversation unfolded without much effort on Rose's part, other than steering Barrie away from discussing her horoscope. Fortunately, Barrie was a big Stars fan, so they had plenty to talk about, and Dimitri gave her his full attention. Rose wished somebody would listen to her with so much interest. His cell rang. He pulled it out to check the number but didn't answer, which Rose took as a positive sign, or maybe a negative one, because she was growing increasingly convinced that Barrie was completely wrong for him.

"Did you play football?" Barrie said with breathless intensity.

"I played college ball, but I wasn't good enough to be more than a benchwarmer for the pros, so I passed."

"You turned down a chance to play for the pros?"

"I don't do anything where I can't be the best."

What about doing something just for fun? Rose wondered. Again, she thought of her work-obsessed brothers.

Barrie pushed her shampoo-model hair back over one shoulder. "Where did you go to college?"

"I got my undergraduate degree at the University of Illinois, then grabbed a chance to go to Harvard Law."

"You went to Harvard?" Barrie exclaimed. "Oh my God, I'm so impressed. I always wanted to go to a big West Coast school, but my parents couldn't afford it."

Dimitri blinked.

Rose grabbed her green phantom and calculated how quickly she could set up his next date.

Your friend sure won't be bringing the cheese dip to the next MENSA potluck," Dimitri said, after Barrie left the restaurant.

Rose resisted the urge to drain her green phantom. "Maybe not, but you've got to admit that she's gorgeous."

"Sweet, too. But I expected better from you, especially after answering all those stupid questions yesterday."

"They weren't stupid. And there's a big difference between what men say they want in a woman and what they really want."

"So this was a test?"

"Sort of. Maybe."

"Don't do it again." He leveled his roughneck's gaze at her. "I'm crystal clear about what I want, and Barrie—while admittedly hot—isn't it."

Rose gazed wistfully toward the doorway. "If I could put my brain in her body, the world would be mine for the taking."

"Ease up, Dr. Evil. The next candidate is due in five minutes, and I have a call to make. Keep her entertained till I get back, will you?"

"The next—? I didn't—"

But he'd already disappeared into a back room. She shot up, ready to go after him, only to see a stylishly dressed blonde enter. With her Escada suit and Chanel bag, she had the stamp of Power Matches all over her. Was he serious? Did he really expect her to entertain a competitor's candidate?

The woman glanced around the bar. Despite her designer duds, she seemed unsure of herself, and Rose's Good Samaritan instinct reared its namby-pamby head. She fought it for almost thirty seconds, but the woman looked so uncomfortable that she finally gave in and made her way to her side. "Are you looking for Dimitri Belikov?"

"Yes, I am."

"He got called away for a few minutes. He asked me to keep an eye out for you. I'm Rosemarie Mazur, his…" She hesitated. Saying she was his backup matchmaker was out of the question, and she couldn't stomach saying she was his assistant, so she settled on the next best thing. "I'm Dimitri's boss."

"Melanie Richter." The woman took in Rose's khaki skirt and fitted persimmon jacket—which, next to all the Escada, wasn't too impressive. Still, she didn't seem judgmental, and she had a friendly smile. "Being a woman in such a male-dominated field must be challenging."

"You have no idea."

Melanie followed her back to the table. Since Rose wasn't anxious to discuss her career as a sports mogul, she asked Melanie about herself and learned that she was divorced with one child. She had a background in fashion, along with a creepy ex who used to yell at her if she didn't disinfect their doorknobs every day. Dimitri finally joined them. Rose introduced him and began to rise only to have his hand settle hard on her bare thigh.

She didn't know which was more annoying, the jolt of sexual electricity that shot through her or the realization that he expected her to stay, but the pressure on her thigh didn't ease.

Melanie fiddled with her purse, looking uncomfortable again. This wasn't her fault, and Rose retrenched.

"Melanie has such an interesting background." In the spirit of fair play, she emphasized Melanie's Junior League charity work and fashion training. Although she mentioned Melanie's son, she said nothing about the creepy ex. She'd barely finished, however, before Dimitri's cell rang. He glanced at it, apologized with all kinds of sincerity, and excused himself.

Rose glared at his back. "My hardest-working employee. Incredibly conscientious."

"I can see that."

Rose decided to take advantage of Melanie's fashion expertise by soliciting her opinion about the best jeans for short women with a tendency toward full hips. Melanie replied graciously—medium low rise, boot cut to the ankle. Then she complimented Rose on her hair. "The color is so unusual. It's almost black but seems to have a red tine. I'd kill for hair like yours."

Rose's hair had always attracted a lot of attention, but she took the compliments she received with a grain of salt, suspecting that people were so startled by the mess they felt they had to say something. Dimitri returned, apologized again, and got down to business with Melanie. He leaned in when she spoke, smiled in all the right places, asked good questions, and seemed genuinely interested in everything she said. Finally, his hand settled on Rose's thigh, but this time she didn't let herself get worked up about it. He was signaling that Melanie's time was over.

After she left, he shot a look at his watch. "Terrific woman, but disappointing."

"How can she be terrific and disappointing? She's nice."

"Very nice. I enjoyed talking with her. But we had no chemistry, and I don't want to marry her."

"Chemistry takes more than twenty minutes to develop. She's smart, and she's a heck of a lot more courteous than you and your cell deserve. She also has that class thing going you say you want. Give her another chance."

"Just a suggestion. I'll bet you could get further in your business by pushing your own candidates instead of somebody else's."

"I know, but I like her." She frowned at him. "Although I couldn't help but notice that she seemed to blame me for breaking up the evening, which is so unfair."

"You'll also go further if you at least pretend to suck up to me."

"Here's what's sad. I have been sucking up."

That country boy mouth crooked at the corner. "The best you can do, huh?"

"I know. Depressing, isn't it."

His amusement turned to suspicion. "What did Melanie mean when she said you should give me a raise?"

"No idea." Her stomach rumbled. "I don't suppose you'd consider feeding me?"

"We don't have time. The next one will be here in ten minutes. I'll buy you another drink instead."

"The next one?"

He pulled out his BlackBerry in a blatant attempt to ignore her, but she wasn't having it. "Tasha Ozera can babysit her own introductions. I'm not doing it."

"Yet only six days ago, you were in my office on your knees telling me you'd do anything to land me as a client."

"I was young and stupid."

"Here's the difference between us… The reason I'm running a multimillion-dollar business and you're not. I give my clients what they want. You give your clients grief."

"Not all of them. Just you. Okay, and sometimes Mr. Dashkov, but you can't imagine what I'm up against there."

"Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about."

"I'd settle for a breadstick."

"Last week I was on the phone with a client who plays for the Bills. He just bought his first house, and he mentioned that he liked my taste and wished I could help him pick out some furniture. Now I'm his agent, not his interior decorator. Hell, I don't know jack about decorating; I haven't even furnished my own place. But the guy broke up with his girlfriend, he's lonely, and two hours later, I was on a plane to Buffalo. I didn't blow him off. I didn't send a lackey. I went myself. And do you know why?"

"A newly discovered passion for country French?"

He arched an eyebrow. "No. Because I want my clients to understand I'm. always there for them. When they sign a contract with me, they sign with someone who cares about every aspect of their lives. Not just when times are good, but when things get rough, too."

"What if you don't like them?" She'd intended the question as a small dig—implying she didn't like him—but he took her seriously, which was just as well. This weird compulsion to put him in his place had to stop. Her future depended on making him happy, not alienating him.

"I'd never sign a client I didn't like," he said.

"You like them all? Every single one of those demanding, egotistical, overpaid, self-indulgent jocks? I don't believe you."

"I love them like they're my brothers," he replied, with unflinching sincerity.

"You are such a bullshitter."

"Am I?" He gave her an inscrutable smile then rose to his feet as Tasha Ozera's second socialite of the evening made her appearance.

***

Don't you have it memorized yet?" Tasha jumped at the sound of a deep and very threatening male voice. She spun around from her spot on the sidewalk in front of Probka's window and took in the man who'd come up next to her. It was only a little after ten, and people still strolled the side-walk, but she felt as though she'd been sucked into a dark alley at midnight. He was a goon, huge and menacing, with a shaved head and a serial killer's translucent blue eyes. An intimidating display of tribal tattoos decorated the ropy muscles visible beneath the sleeves of his tightly fitted black T-shirt, and his thick, muscular neck belonged to a man who'd done hard time.

"Didn't anybody tell you spying on people isn't nice?" he said.

For the past hour, she'd been circling the block, stopping each time she passed the restaurant to pretend to study the menu. If she looked over the top, she could see the table where Dimitri was sitting, along with Rose and the two women Tasha had arranged for him to meet tonight. Normally Tasha wouldn't have thought of being present during an initial introduction—only a few clients had ever requested it—except she'd learned he wanted Rose there, and Tasha couldn't tolerate that.

"Who are you?" she said, pretending a bravado she didn't feel.

"Ivan Zeklos, Belikov's bodyguard. And he sure will be interested to hear what you've been up to tonight."

The muscles in the small of her back cramped. This was beyond humiliating. "I haven't been up to a thing."

"That's not what it looks like to me."

"But then you're hardly an authority on matchmaking, are you?" She regarded him coldly, doing her best to stare him down. "How about minding your own business and letting me mind mine?"

Her assistants would have dived for cover, but he didn't even blink. "Belikov's business is my business."

"My, my… Quite the dedicated gofer."

"Everybody should have one." He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the curb.

She gave a hiss of dismay. "What are you doing?" She tried to wrench away, but he didn't let go.

"I'm going to buy you a beer so Mr. Belikov can finish his business in private."

"It's my business, too, and I'm not—"

"Yeah, you really are." He steered her between two parked cars. "But if you make nice, you might be able to convince me to keep my mouth shut."

She stopped struggling and gazed at Mr. Bodyguard through the corner of her eyes. So… he was willing to sell out his boss. Dimitri should have known better than to hire a thug, but since he hadn't, she'd take advantage of his naivete because she did not want him to find out about this. If he did, he'd see it for exactly what it was, a sign of weakness.

The bar they entered was smoky and sour, with a cracked linoleum floor and a dying philodendron sitting on a dusty shelf between a couple of fly-specked trophies and a faded photograph of Mel Torme.

"Hey, Ivan, how's it hanging?" the bartender called out.

"No complaints."

Ivan steered her toward a barstool. On the way, one of her shoes stuck to something on the floor. As she freed it, she wondered how such a seedy establishment could exist so close to Clark Street's best restaurants.

"Two beers," Mr. Bodyguard said as she perched gingerly on the stool next to him.

"Club soda," she interjected. "With a sliver of lime."

"No limes," the bartender said, "but I got a can of fruit cocktail in the back room."

Muscle Man found this hilarious, and a few moments later she was staring at the faint outline of a leftover lipstick imprint on the rim of a beer mug. She pushed it aside. "How did you know who I was?"

"You match Belikov's description."

She didn't ask how Dimitri had described her. She tried not to ask any question where she wasn't certain of the answer, and something had gone seriously haywire in her relationship with Dimitri the moment Rosemarie Mazur had entered the picture.

"I won't apologize for doing my job," she said. "Dimitri is paying me a lot of money to help him, but I can't do that properly if he cuts me out."

"So it's okay if I tell him about the spying?"

"What you call spying, I call earning my paycheck," she said carefully.

"I doubt he'll see it that way."

She doubted it, too, but she wouldn't let him intimidate her. "Tell me what you want."

She watched as he thought it over. Reading people was an important part of her business, but her clients were wealthy and well educated, so how could she tell what was going on behind those ice pick blue eyes? She hated uncertainty. "Well?"

"I'm thinking."

She opened her purse, extracted two fifty-dollar bills, and set them in front of him. "Maybe this will help that difficult process along."

He looked down at the money, shrugged, and shifted his weight to stuff the bills in his pocket. His hips were much narrower than his shoulders, she noticed, his thighs long boned and solid.

"Now," she said. "We can just forget all about tonight."

"I don't know. It's a lot to forget… even for someone like me."

She gazed at him more closely, trying to decide if he was putting her on, but she couldn't read him.

"I'll tell you what," he said. "Why don't we talk the situation over next weekend? Let's say a week from Friday. See how things are coming along by then."

She hadn't expected this. "Why don't we not."

"I'd do it this weekend, but I gotta be out of town."

"What do you want?"

He studied her openly. His mouth was finely chiseled, almost delicate, which made the rest of his features seem all the more sinister. "I'll let you know when I decide."

"Forget it. I'm not going to allow you to string me along." She tried to stare him down, but he refused to play. Instead, his mouth quirked in a gangster's cocky grin.

"Are you sure? If you are, I can always talk to Mr. Belikov tonight."

She gritted her teeth. "Fine. Next Friday." She slid off the stool and pulled open her purse. "Here's my card. Don't try to screw me, or you'll regret it."

"Probably." His eyes slid over her like hot caramel on ice cream. "Still, it might be interesting."

Something heady and unexpected shot through her. She snapped her purse shut and left the bar to the sound of a wicked chuckle.

The next Power Matches candidate proved to be beautiful but self-centered, and Rose led the conversation to showcase her flaws. She needn't have bothered. Dimitri had the woman's number from the start. At the same time, he treated her with the utmost respect, and Rose realized that Dimitri wasn't quite the egomaniac she'd first thought. He seemed to find the human condition in all its forms interesting. Knowing that made it tough for her to hold on to her dislike. Not that she'd been holding on to it very hard.

"Entertaining," he said after she left, "but not in a good way. This evening's been a time sink."

"Your next match won't be. I've got someone special lined up." Nana's senior client base was turning out to be a rich source of referrals. Rachel Gorny, the granddaughter of one of Nana's oldest friends, didn't have Barrie's extravagant beauty, but she was intelligent, accomplished, and strong-minded enough to hold her own against him. She also had the social polish Dimitri seemed to require. Rose had considered introducing them tonight, but she'd wanted to see how he'd react to Barrie first.

She toyed with her swizzle stick to keep herself from studying Dimitri's profile and made a mental note to look for a sweet, hunky, not-too-bright guy who'd treat Barrie well.

"You'll need to do a better job, Rose. No more dates like the first one tonight."

"Agreed. And no more making me sit through your Power Matches introductions, either. As you so wisely pointed out, helping Tasha Ozera isn't in my best interests."

"Then why are you still trying to talk me into seeing Melanie again?"

"Hunger makes me weird."

"You got rid of the last one in fourteen minutes. Well done. I'm rewarding you by letting you sit in on all the introductions from now on."

She nearly choked on an ice cube. "What are you talking about?"

"Exactly what I said."

"By all, you don't mean—"

"As a matter of fact, I do." He drew out a big gold money clip stuffed with bills, tossed a few on the table, and pulled her from her chair. "Let's get you fed."

"But— I'm not— I won't—" She sputtered her way across the bar, trying to tell him that she had no intention of hanging around with Tasha's candidates and that he'd obviously lost what was left of his mind, but he ignored her to greet the owner, a wiry terrier of a man. They conversed in Russian, which surprised her, because even though he had a slight accent she never thought what it would sound like to hear him to speak the language, and she never paid any thought about him being bilingual.

They'd barely been seated in the dining room's prime booth before the waiter took their drink orders and greeted Dimitri with a breadbasket and antipasto platter. More Russian flew. Rose couldn't resist the yeasty smell of the warm bread, so she tore off a chunk and dredged it through a rosemary-flavored puddle of olive oil.

Like the bar, the dining room had roughly plastered gold walls and heavy purple moldings, but the lighting was brighter here, showcasing the salmon tablecloths and grape-colored napkins. Small earthenware pots at each table held simple arrangements of country flowers and herbs. The restaurant had a homey, comfortable feel, yet still projected an air of elegance.

Dimitri knew more about wine that she did, and he ordered a cabernet for her, but he drank Sam Adams himself. The antipasto platter overflowed with meats, stuffed mushrooms, sprigs of fried sage, and matchstick skewers of pecorino cheese and plump red cherries. "Eat first," he said. "Then we'll talk."

She was more than happy to comply, and he didn't bother her until the entrees appeared. He took a few bites, sipped his beer, then turned the same razor-sharp focus on her he'd directed at his dates all evening. "I want you around for all the introductions from now on, doing exactly what you did tonight."

"If you ruin the best meal I've eaten in forever, I'll never forgive you."

"You're intuitive, and you kept the conversations going. Despite your opinion about Melanie, you seem to know what's working for me and what's not. I'd be stupid not to make use of that, and I'm definitely not stupid."

She loaded up her fork with a scoop of golden, garlicky polenta. "Remind me how it's to my advantage to help Tasha Ozera make this match because I've forgotten that part."

He picked up his knife. "We're cutting a new deal." With one efficient motion, he split a chunk of sausage in half. "That ten thousand dollars you wanted to charge me was nothing more than a fishing expedition, and we both know it."

"It wasn't a—"

"I paid you five thousand instead and promised the balance only if you made the match. As it turns out, this is your lucky day because I've decided to write you the full check, whether the match comes from you or from Tasha. As long as I have a wife and you've been part of the process, you'll get your money." He toasted her with his beer mug. "Congratulations."

She put down her fork. "Why would you do that?"

"Because it's efficient."

"Not as efficient as having Tasha handle her own introductions. You're paying her a fortune to do exactly that."

"I'd rather have you."

Her pulse kicked. "Why?"

He gave her the melty smile he must have been practicing since the cradle, one that made her feel as though she was the only woman in the world. "Because you're easier to bully. Do we have a deal or not?"

"You don't want a matchmaker. You want a lackey."

"Semantics. My hours are erratic, and my schedule changes without warning. It'll be your job to cope with all that. You'll soothe ruffled feathers when I need to cancel at the last minute. You'll keep my dates company when I'm going to be late, entertain them if I have to take a call. If things are going well, you'll disappear. If not, you'll make the woman disappear. I told you before. I work hard at my job. I don't want to have to work hard at this, too."

"Basically, you expect me to find your bride, court her, and hand her over at the altar. Or do I have to come on the honeymoon, too?"

"Definitely not." He gave her a lazy smile. "I can take care of that all by myself."

Something sizzled in the air between them, something that felt heady and seductive, at least in her sex-starved imagination. She took a sip of water and absorbed the dismaying realization that she was attracted to him, even though she wanted to hit him in the head with that beer bottle. Well, so what? He was a natural charmer, and she was only human. This wouldn't be a problem unless she let it be.

She took her time thinking it over. Although she hated the idea of being at his beck and call, this arrangement would give her more control, as well as potentially doubling her money. Power Matches only signed contracts with men, but Perfect for You signed both men and women, so she might be able to pick up some great female clients out of Dimitri's rejects. Melanie, for example, could be a match for Shirley Miller's godson, Jerry. He was nice looking, moderately successful, and they had children about the same age. Just because Jerry wasn't currently a client didn't mean Rose couldn't land him as one.

"Tasha Ozera will never agree to this," she said.

"She won't have a choice."

Just like I don't, Rose thought. But that wasn't entirely true. She had a choice, all right. Unfortunately, making it would be self-defeating. "You should cancel your contract with her and let me take care of everything."

"She has access to women you don't," he replied. "Odds are, she'll find the one I end up choosing."

"Tonight being a sterling example of her good judgment?"

"Tonight being a sterling example of yours?"

He had her there. She toyed with a mushroom. "You understand, don't you, that it's in my best interest to sabotage her candidates. As much as I need the money, I need to build the reputation of Perfect for You even more."

"I stand warned, Mata Hari."

"You're not taking me seriously."

He cocked an eyebrow. "You told me to see Melanie again."

"Only because my blood glucose was out of whack. Now that I've eaten it's clear to me that she's way too decent for you."

"Give it a rest, Roza." He offered up his snake's smile. "You're one of those people who was cursed with personal integrity. And I'm one of those people who's smart enough to take advantage of it."

There wasn't much she could say to that, so she returned her attention to the scallops.

It had been a long time since Dimitri had enjoyed watching a woman eat, but Rose knew how to appreciate a good meal. A blissful expression came over her face as she slipped another mushroom into her mouth. The tip of her tongue picked up a dab of leftover sauce at the bow of her lip. His eyes drifted along her throat to her collarbone and down to those round, mango sized breasts…

"What?" Her fork hung in midair, and tiny frown lines creased her forehead.

He quickly rearranged his expression. "I was wondering about your next candidate. Do you really have one lined up?"

She smiled and propped an elbow on the table. "Yes. And she's special. Sharp, attractive, fun to be with."

"At the risk of incurring your wrath, there are thousands of women who meet that description. I'm looking for someone extraordinary."

Her brown eyes announced an amber alert. "Extraordinary women tend to fall in love with men who put them first. Which pretty much rules out a guy who excuses himself in the middle of a conversation to take a phone call like you did tonight."

"It was an emergency."

"With you, I suspect they all are. No offense."

He ran his thumb around the rim of his mug. "I don't usually feel the need to defend myself, but I'm going to make an exception now, and you can apologize when I'm done."

"We'll see."

"A player I recruited a couple of years ago wrapped his Maserati around a telephone pole tonight. That was his mother on the phone. He's not even my client—he signed with another agent—but I got to know his folks a little. Nice people. He's in intensive care…" He nudged his plate back from the edge of the table with his thumb. "She called to let me know they don't expect him to last until morning." He gazed at her. "You tell me which was most important. Making small talk or comforting that mother?"

She stared at him. Then she laughed. "You just made that up."

He was seldom taken by surprise, but Rose Mazur had done it. He gave her his iciest glare. "Interesting that you find someone's tragedy so amusing."

Her eyes crinkled at the corners, golden flecks dancing in the irises. "You totally made it up."

He tried to stare her down—he was superb at stare-downs— but she looked so pleased with herself that he lost it and laughed.

She regarded him smugly. "I have two brothers who are also overachieving workaholics, so I'm intimately acquainted with the tricks performed by men of your ilk."

"I have an ilk?"

"A definite ilk."

"It finally becomes clear…" He propped his elbow on the table, rubbed the corner of his mouth, and studied her over the back of his hand. "Poor, pathetic Rose. All the inappropriate put-downs you've subjected me to, the snide comments… A simple case of transfer. The result of growing up overshadowed by those magnificent brothers. Was it very painful to feel so neglected? Do the scars still ache when it rains?"

She snorted, a surprisingly loud sound coming from such a small woman. "I prayed to be neglected. Ballet, piano, horseback riding. Fencing, for Pete's sake. Who makes their kid take fencing lessons? Girl Scouts, orchestra, tutors if I slipped below a B, monetary incentives to join every club with a special bonus if I ran for office. And yet somehow I survived, although the torture continues."

She'd just described his dream childhood. Fragments of memory swept over him. His father's drunken voice… Pull your head out of that goddamned book and go buy me some cigarettes. Cockroaches scrambling under the refrigerator, leaky pipes dripping rusty water on the linoleum. The scent of Lysol—a good memory—when one of the old man's girlfriends tried to clean up the place, and then the inevitable bang of that warped metal door when she'd storm out.

Rose chased her remaining scallop to the edge of the plate and looked up at him. "I really think you'll like Rachel."

"I like Gwen."

"That's because she refused you. The two of you had no chemistry."

"You're so wrong. There was definite chemistry."

"I don't get why you need a wife right now. You have Ivan, you have assistants, and you can hire a housekeeper to handle all those impromptu dinner parties. As for having kids… It's hard to raise them with a cell phone super glued to your ear."

It was long past time to put Rose in her place. He settled back in his chair and let his eyes drift to her breasts. "You left out sex."

She took a few seconds too long to respond. "You can hire that, too."

"Roza," he drawled, "I've never had to pay for sex in my life."

She flushed, and he thought he finally had her where he wanted her, only to watch that small nose shoot into the air. "Which merely points out how desperate some women can be."

"Speaking personally?"

"Raoul's opinion. My lover. He's very insightful."

He grinned, and right then it occurred to him that he hadn't enjoyed himself so much with a woman in a very long time. If Rosemarie Hathaway-Mazur were a few inches taller, a hell of a lot more sophisticated, better organized, less bossy, and more inclined to worship at his feet, she'd have made a perfect wife.


	5. Chapter 5

**Sooo 2 Chapters in one day is because its my birthday and I'm a lot further ahead than you guys! I hope you can keep enjoying the story and are patient enough to see it through. Once again YES it's a ROMITRI fic also as usual I own nothing enjoy!**

Chapter Five

Someone took the seat next to Dimitri in the first-class cabin, but he was too preoccupied with the spreadsheet he'd pulled up on his laptop to pay attention. It wasn't until the flight attendant called for electronic devices to be shut off that he grew conscious of a dark, subtle perfume. He lifted his head and found himself looking into a set of intelligent blue eyes. "Tasha?"

"Good morning, Dimitri." She leaned against the headrest. "How in the world do you cope with these early morning flights?"

"You get used to it."

"I'll pretend to believe you."

She was wearing some kind of a silky lilac wrap dress, slim and sleeveless, with a purple cardigan knotted around her shoulders and a silver chain at her neck studded with three bezel-set diamonds. She was a beautiful woman, cultured and accomplished, and he liked doing business with her, but he didn't find her sexy. She was too carefully put together, too aggressive. Pretty much a female version of himself. "What takes you to Tampa?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

"Not the weather, that's for sure. It's going to be ninety-three degrees there today."

"Is it?" Dimitri paid no attention to any weather that didn't affect the outcome of a game.

She gave him a smile designed to charm. It might have worked if he didn't own a similar smile that he used for exactly the same purpose. "After your phone call last night, I decided we needed to evaluate where we are and see what adjustments we should make. I promise I won't talk your head off the entire flight. Nothing is more annoying than being trapped on a plane with someone who won't shut up."

If he had to be cooped up on a plane with one of his matchmakers, he would have preferred Rose. He could have bullied her into leaving him alone. Tasha's appearance this morning had nothing to do with a sudden urge to visit Tampa. He'd explained the new arrangement to her over the phone last night then hung up while she was still in shock. Obviously, she'd recovered.

She contented herself with general chitchat until they were in the air, but once the breakfast service started she began working her way to the point. "Melanie really enjoyed meeting you. More than enjoyed. I do believe she has a bit of a crush on you."

"I hope not. Nice person, but I didn't feel any real connection with her."

"You were only together for twenty minutes." She gave him the identical sympathetic smile he used when a client was being difficult. "I understand exactly where you're coming from, but the time limit you've set is a bit of a problem. I've been in this business long enough to recognize when two people need to give themselves a second chance, and I think you and Melanie qualify."

"Sorry, but it's not going to happen."

Her forehead remained smooth, her expression composed. "This won't work, you know." She toyed with the yogurt carton on her fruit plate. "I never put down the competition, especially when it's a tiny operation like Marriages by Myrna. It smacks too much of bullying. But—"

"Perfect for You."

"What?"

"She calls it Perfect for You, not Marriages by Myrna." He couldn't imagine why he felt the need to clarify this, but somehow it seemed necessary.

"A wise decision," Tasha replied, with only a whiff of condescension. "But let me just say this. I resent the way people think a trip to Kinko's to get business cards printed up is all it takes to be a matchmaker. But then, as a sports agent, you know exactly what I mean."

She'd scored a field goal with that one. Rose had no depth of experience, only enthusiasm.

Tasha pushed aside her tray, although she'd only nibbled at the corner of a honeydew cube. "Is there something we're not providing that makes you feel the need to expose my candidates to an outsider? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't the tiniest bit threatened, especially since I offered to sit in on these initial interviews myself."

"Don't worry about it. Rose lacks the killer instinct. She liked Melanie better than she liked her own candidate. She tried to talk me into seeing her again."

That caught her by surprise. "Really? Well… Ms. Mazur is an odd little duck, isn't she?"

It must have been the engine noise because, for a moment, he thought she said "odd little fuck," and he was hit with a vision of Rose naked. The notion took him aback. Rose amused him, but she didn't turn him on. Not really. Maybe he'd thought about her sexually a couple of times, and he'd made a couple of smarmy references to fluster her. But nothing serious. Just messing around.

The plane hit an air pocket, and he pulled his mind from the bedroom back to business. "I don't expect you to be comfortable with this, but as I said last night, the process will go smoother if Rose's there for all the introductions."

The fire in her eyes told him exactly what she was thinking, but she was too much of a pro to lose her cool. "That's a matter of opinion."

"She's a tadpole, Tasha, not a shark. The women relax with her, and I can get a clearer picture of who they are in a shorter period of time."

"I see. Well, I've been doing this for a lot more years than she has. I'm sure I could expedite these interviews better than—"

"Tasha, you couldn't be nonthreatening if you tried, and I mean that as the highest form of compliment. I told you from the beginning that I intended to make this easy on myself. It turns out that Rose's the key, and nobody's more surprised about that than I am."

She retrenched, but she wasn't happy about it. He didn't entirely blame her. If somebody poached on his territory, he'd have come out swinging, too. "All right, Dimitri," she said. "If this is what you need, then I'll make sure it works."

"Exactly what I want to hear."

The flight attendant took their trays, and he pulled out his copy of the Sports Lawyers Journal. But the article on tort liability and fan violence didn't hold his attention. Despite his best efforts to keep it simple, his hunt for a wife was growing more complicated by the day.

***

I like her," Dimitri said to Rose on the following Monday evening as Rachel left Probka's. "She's fun. I had a good time."

"Me, too," Rose said, even though that was hardly the point. But the introduction had gone better than she'd dared hope, with lots of laughter and lively conversation. The three of them had shared their food prejudices (Dimitri wouldn't touch an organ meat, Rachel hated olives, and Rose couldn't stomach anchovies). They told embarrassing stories from their high school years and debated the merits of the Coen brothers' movies. (Thumbs-up from Dimitri, thumbs-down from Rachel and Rose.) Dimitri didn't seem to mind that Rachel wasn't a knockout on the order of Gwen Phelps. She had both the polish and the brains he was looking for, and there were no cell phone interruptions. Rose allowed the twenty minutes to expand to forty.

"Good work, Rose." He drew out his BlackBerry and typed a memo to himself. "I'll call her tomorrow and ask her out."

"Really? That's great." She felt a little queasy.

He looked up from the BlackBerry. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Why?"

"You have a funny expression."

She pulled herself back together. She was a professional now, and she could handle this. "I'm just imagining the newspaper interviews I'll give after Perfect for You hits the Fortune Five Hundred."

"Nothing's more inspiring than a girl with a dream." He returned the BlackBerry to his pocket and withdrew his well-stuffed money clip. She frowned. He frowned back. "Now what?"

"Don't you have a nice, discreet credit card tucked away somewhere?"

"In my business, it's all about the flash." He flashed a hundred-dollar bill and tossed it on the table.

"I'm only mentioning it because, as I think I told you, image consultation is part of my business." She hesitated, knowing she had to tread carefully. "For some women… women of a certain upbringing… obvious displays of wealth can be a little off-putting."

"Believe me, they're not off-putting to twenty-one-year-old kids who've grown up with food stamps."

"I see your point, but—"

"Got it. Money clip for business, credit card for courtship." He slipped the object under discussion back into his pocket.

She'd basically accused him of vulgarity, but instead of being offended, he seemed to have filed the information away as dispassionately as if she'd given him tomorrow's weather report. She considered his flawless table manners, the way he dressed, his knowledge of food and wine. Clearly these things had all been part of his curriculum, right along with torts and constitutional law. Exactly who was Dimitri Belikov, and why was she beginning to like him so much?

She pleated her cocktail napkin. "So… about your childhood… ?"

"Which is none of your damned business."

"Something bad then."

"Horrifying," he said dryly. "Look, Rose, I grew up in a trailer park. Not a nice mobile home park—that would have been paradise. These heaps weren't good enough for scrap. The neighbors were addicts, thieves, people who'd gotten lost in the system. My bedroom looked out over a junkyard. I lost my mother in a car accident when I was four. My old man was a decent guy when he wasn't drunk, but that wasn't very often. I earned everything I have, and I'm proud of that. I don't hide where I came from. That dented metal sign on my office wall, the one that says beau vista, used to hang on a post not far from our door. I keep it as a reminder of how far I've come. But beyond that, my business is mine, and yours is doing what I tell you. Got it?"

"Jeez, all I did was ask."

"Don't ask again."

I want you in the clubs every night," Tasha announced to her staff the next morning. Spiridon, Probka's bartender, had awakened her at midnight with the disturbing news about Rosemarie Mazur's success with her latest match, and she hadn't been able to fall back to sleep. She couldn't get past the feeling that another important client was slipping away from her. "Pass out your business cards," she told Marcella and Mirabel, along with Diana, the girl she'd hired to replace Iris. "Pick up phone numbers. You know the routine."

"We've done that," Mirabel said.

"But apparently not well enough or Dimitri Belikov wouldn't have made plans with Mazur's prospect last night instead of ours. And what about Hendricks and Mccall? We haven't shown them anybody new in two weeks? What about the rest of our clients? Marcella, I want you to spend the rest of the week staking out the modeling agencies. I'll hit the charity luncheons and the Oak Street boutiques. Mirabel and Diana, work the hair salons and the big department stores. All of you—clubs at night. By this time next week, we're going to be screening a fresh batch of candidates."

"A lot of good it'll do with Dimitri," Mirabel muttered. "He doesn't like anybody."

They didn't get it, Tasha thought as she returned to her office and flipped through her calendar. They didn't understand how hard you had to work to stay on top. She gazed down at Friday's calendar entry. In a short, terse phone conversation, Ivan Zeklos had set up their date for this weekend. She'd done her best not to think about it since. Just the possibility that someone might see them together gave her nightmares. But at least he didn't seem to have told Dimitri about her spying episode.

A helicopter flew overhead. She rubbed her temples and considered setting up a spa day. She needed something to lift her spirits, something to make her feel like her old self again. But as she turned toward her computer, a traitorous voice whispered there weren't enough massages, ayurvedic facials, or hot stone pedicures in the world to fix whatever wanted to stop working inside her.

Rose couldn't afford to pin all her hopes on Rachel's date with Dimitri, so she spent the rest of the week hanging out at two of Chicago's top universities. At the University of Chicago in Hyde Park, she alternated between haunting the hallways of the Graduate School of Business and lingering by the steps of the Harris School of Public Policy. She also made her way to Lincoln Park, where she spent most of her time with the music majors at the De Paul Concert Hall. At both schools, she kept her eyes open for comely graduate students and beautiful faculty members. When she found them, she approached them directly, explained who she was and what she was looking for. Some were married or engaged, one was a lesbian, but the world loves a matchmaker, and most of the women were interested in helping her. By the end of the week, she had two great candidates ready to go if she needed them, as well as half a dozen women who weren't right for Dimitri, but who were interested in signing on as clients themselves. Since they couldn't afford the kinds of fees she wanted to charge, she established an academic discount. Dimitri was out of town for the week, and he didn't call. Not that she expected him to. Still, for someone who spent all his time on the phone, she would have thought he could have spared a few minutes to check in with her. Instead of stewing about it, she slipped on her sneakers, jogged to Dunkin' Donuts, and distracted herself with an apple Danish.

Dimitri spent the first four days of the week traveling between Dallas, Atlanta, and St. Louis, but even as he met with clients and player personnel directors, he found himself thinking ahead to his Friday afternoon powwow at Stars headquarters. When it came to the Stars, he tried to do as much business as possible with Ron McDermitt, the team's top-notch general manager, but once again Mia Rinaldi had insisted on seeing him instead. Not a good sign.

Dimitri prided himself on having a good relationship with all the team owners. Mia was the glaring exception. It was his fault they'd gotten off to a bad start. One of his first clients had been a Green Bay veteran unhappy with the contract his former agent had negotiated. Dimitri wanted to prove how tough he was, so when the Stars expressed interest in the guy, Dimitri had unfairly strung Mia along, letting her believe she had a good chance at signing him even though he knew otherwise. He'd then taken her interest in the player to the Packers' bargaining table and used it to gain the leverage he needed to get his client a better deal. Mia was furious and, in a blistering phone call, warned him never to use her like that again.

Instead of taking her words to heart, he'd gotten into another battle with her a few months later over a second client, this one a Stars player. Dimitri had decided he needed to sweeten the third year of an existing three-year contract, again negotiated by a former agent, but Mia refused to budge. After a few weeks, Dimitri threatened to hold the player out of training camp. The guy was her best tight end, and since Dimitri had her over a barrel, she came through with a respectable counteroffer. Still, it wasn't the splashy new deal Dimitri thought he needed to establish his reputation as an agent on the move. He dug in and sent the player deep-sea fishing the day training camp started.

Mia was enraged, and the media had a field day playing up the feud between the Stars' tight-fisted owner and the city's brash new agent. Dimitri capitalized on the player's popularity with the fans by giving interviews at the drop of a hat and dramatically berating Mia for treating one of her best men so shabbily. As the first week of training camp came to end, Dimitri kept on showboating, staying cozy with the sports columnists and working the sound bites on the ten o'clock news. A back swell built against Mia. Still, she wouldn't budge.

Just as he'd begun to have second thoughts about the wisdom of his strategy, a stroke of luck occurred. The Stars' backup tight end broke his ankle in practice, and Mia was forced to cave. Dimitri got the extravagant deal he wanted, but in the process, he'd made her look bad, and she'd never forgiven him. The experiences taught him two hard lessons: In a good negotiation, everybody comes out feeling like a winner. And a successful agent doesn't build his reputation by humiliating the people he has to work with.

The Stars' receptionist directed him to the practice field, and as he approached, he saw Adrian Ivashkov cozying up to Mia on the sidelines bench. He swore under his breath. The last thing he wanted Ivashkov to witness was Mia Rinaldi cutting him to shreds. Adrian looked like he'd stepped out of Surfer Magazine: beard stubble, gel-rumpled brown hair, tropical print shorts, a T-shirt, and athletic sandals. Hoping to minimize the collateral damage, Dimitri made a quick decision and concentrated on him first. "Is that a new Porsche I saw sitting in your parking space?"

Adrian gazed at him through the yellow iridium lenses of a pair of high-tech Oakleys. "That ol'junker? Heck, no. I bought it at least three weeks ago."

Dimitri found a laugh, even though the hair had begun to stand up on the back of his neck. And not from being around Ivashkov. He slipped on his own sunglasses, not so much to protect his eyes, but to even out the playing field.

"Well, well, well…" Mia Rinaldi cooed in the husky, bimbo voice she used to conceal her razor-sharp mind. "Look who's joined us. And I thought our exterminator had gotten rid of all the rats around here."

"Nope. The meanest and strongest somehow manage to survive." Dimitri grinned, doing his best to hit the balance between not pissing her off any more than he had to and letting Adrian see she couldn't intimidate him.

The Stars' owner and chief operating officer was in her forties now, and nobody wore the years better. She looked like a more intellectual version of Marilyn Monroe, with the same cloud of pale blond hair and a powerhouse body, today clad in a clingy aqua shell and pencil-slim canary yellow skirt slit up the side. Busty, leggy, and delectable, she should have been a centerfold instead of the most powerful woman in the NFL.

Adrian rose. "I think I'll get out of here before the two of you accidentally hurt my passing arm."

Dimitri couldn't back down now. "Shoot, Adrian, we haven't even started having fun yet. Stick around and watch me make Mia cry."

Ivashkov gazed down at his beautiful boss. "I've never seen this crazy man before in my life."

She smiled. "Run along, Adrian honey. Your sex life will be screwed up forever if you're forced to watch all the ways a woman can chop up a snake."

Retreat wouldn't win Dimitri the quarterback's heart, and as Ivashkov began to walk away, Dimitri called out after him. "Hey, Adrian… Sometime ask Mia to show you where she buries the bones of all the agents who don't have the balls to stand up to her."

Adrian waved good-bye without turning around. "I didn't hear that, Ms. Rinaldi. I'm just a sweet mama's boy from California who wants to play a little football for you and go to church in my spare time."

Mia laughed and stretched her long bare legs as Adrian disappeared through the fence. "I like that boy. I like him so much I'm going to make sure you never get your grubby hands on him."

"I doubt it was too hard to lure him out here today so he could witness our little meeting."

"Not hard at all."

"It's been seven years, Mia. Don't you think it's time we bury the hatchet?"

"As long as the blade ends up in the back of your neck, I'm game."

He slipped his fingers in his pockets and smiled. "The best day of my career was the day your brother-in-law signed on as my client. I still savor every minute of it."

Mia scowled. She loved Christian Ozera as though they were blood relatives instead of being related by marriage, and the fact that he'd ignored her entreaty and signed with Dimitri was a bitter pill she'd never quite been able to swallow. Dimitri's first negotiations with her over Christian's contract had been brutal. Just because family was involved didn't mean Mia believed in loosening her iron grip on the Stars' finances, and he still remembered the way she'd methodically x-ed out an admittedly outrageous bonus package Dimitri had stuck in to test the waters.

"Family is family, and business is business. I love the boy, but not that much."

"Who are you kidding?" Dimitri had said. "You'd walk over coals for him."

"Yes, but I'd leave my checkbook behind while I was doing it."

Dimitri gazed toward the practice field. Although training camp wouldn't start for more than a month, a few players were running drills with the team's trainer. He nodded toward a fourth-year player, one of the Zagorskis' clients. "Keman's looking good."

"He'd look a lot better if he spent more time in the weight room and less time selling used cars on TV. But Dan likes him."

Dan Calebow was the Stars' president and Mia's husband. She'd chosen not to take his name when they married. They'd met when Mia had inherited the Stars from her father. At the time, Dan had been the head coach and Mia had known nothing about football, something that was hard to believe now. Their early battles were nearly as legendary as their ensuing love story. Last year one of the cable channels had made a cheesy movie about them, and Dan was still getting ribbed because he'd been portrayed by a former boy band singer.

"I want a three-year contract," Mia said, getting down to the business of Caleb Crenshaw.

"Yeah, I'd want one, too, if I were you, but Caleb's only signing for two years."

"Three. It's not negotiable." She stated her case without consulting notes, reeling off complex statistics in her breathy, sex-kitten's voice. They both had excellent memories, and he didn't write anything down, either.

"You know I can't advise Caleb to take that offer." He propped his foot on the bench next to her. "By the third year, he'll be worth millions more than you'll be paying him." Which was exactly why she wanted the three-year deal.

"Only if he stays healthy," she retorted, as he'd known she would. "I'm the one taking all the risk. If he blows out his knee that third year, I'll still have to pay him." She went on from there, emphasizing her altruism and the unending gratitude a player should feel for simply being allowed to wear the uniform of football legends like Bobby Tom Denton, Cal Bonner, Darnell Pruitt, and, yes, Christian Ozera.

Dimitri threatened a holdout, even though he had no intention of carrying it through. What he'd once seen as a canny bargaining tool he now regarded as a desperate measure guaranteed to do more harm than good.

Mia bore down, hitting him with more breathy statistics, peppered with allusions to ungrateful players and bloodsucking agents.

He countered with statistics of his own, all of them pointing toward the fact that tightwad owners ended up with resentful players and a losing season.

In the end, they arrived at the place they'd both pretty much known they'd reach. Mia got her three-year contract, and Caleb Crenshaw got a one-and-a-half-million-dollar signing bonus for the insult. Win. Win. Except it was an agreement they could have reached three months ago if Mia hadn't gone out of her way to make things as hard for him as she could.

"Hey, Dimitri."

He turned to see Lissa Ozera approaching. Christian's wife couldn't have been more different from the standard-issue knockout blond NFL spouse. Her body was trim and compact, but hardly memorable. Except for a pair of jade green eyes that tilted up at the corners, she and Mia bore little physical resemblance. He definitely liked Lissa a lot more than he liked her sister. Chris' wife was smart, funny, and easy to talk to. In some ways, she reminded him of Rose, although Rose was smaller, and her shock of curls bore no resemblance to Lissa's straight blond hair. Still, they were both feisty smart-asses, and he wasn't letting down his guard in front of either of them.

Lissa had a baby in her arms, one Andre Eric Ozera, aged nine months. She held a curly-haired little girl by the opposite hand. Dimitri was glad to see Lissa, neutral about seeing the baby boy, and less than pleased to be in the presence of the three-year-old girl. Thankfully, Victoria Rhea Ozera who had given herself the nick name Pippi for reasons unknown to him, had a more important target in sight.

"Aunt Mia!" She dropped her mother's hand and made her way toward the Stars' owner as fast as her small feet, clad in bright red rubber boots, could carry her. The boots looked weird with her purple polka-dot shorts and top. It also hadn't rained in two weeks, but he had personal experience with Pippi Ozera's single-mindedness, and he didn't blame Lissa for choosing her battles.

In a case of like attracting like, Mia hopped up from the bench to greet the little curly-haired larcenist. "Hey, pumpkin'."

"Guess what, Aunt Mia…"

Dimitri tuned the kid out as Lissa came over to him. She touched the side of his neck. "I don't see any puncture marks, so your meeting must have gone well."

"I'm still alive."

She shifted the baby from one arm to the other. "So have you found Mrs. Belikov yet? Rose's got this weird— and totally unnecessary—thing going about confidentiality."

He smiled. "I'm still looking." He grabbed the baby's drooly fist as a distraction. "Hey, pal, how's that throwing arm coming along?"

He wasn't great with kids, and the little boy buried his face in his mother's shoulder.

"No football," Lissa said. "This one's going to be a writer like me. Aren't you, Andre?" Lissa kissed the top of the baby's head, then frowned. "Have you talked to Rose today?"

"No, why?" Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mia smile fondly at Pippi. He wished just once she'd give him a smile half that genuine.

"I've been trying to get hold of her all day," Lissa said, "but her phones aren't working. If she happens to call you, tell her I want to talk to her about the grand soiree tomorrow afternoon."

"One o'clock." Mia spoke over the top of Pippi's curly blond head. "Does she know we changed the time?"

Dimitri went very still. A party? This was exactly the chance he'd been waiting for.

"I wish I could remember," Lissa said. "But I'm on deadline, and I've been distracted."

The Ozera and Calebows/Rinaldi's got together all the time, but Dimitri never received an invitation, no matter how many times he explained to Chris that he needed one. Dimitri wanted a chance to be with Mia when they weren't doing battle, and an informal social gathering was the perfect opportunity. Maybe if they weren't wrangling over a contract, she'd see he was generally a decent guy. Over the years, he'd tried to set up a dozen lunches and dinners, but she always ducked, generally with cracks about food poisoning. Now Lissa was throwing a party, and she'd invited Rose. The person she hadn't invited was him.

Maybe it was a female-only affair. Or maybe not.

There was only one way to find out.


	6. Chapter 6

**Authors note. Sooo a few of you have been asking if im going to continue the story and the answer is yes definitely I've just been really really busy but im finally home now and things are settling down for now so I thought I'd give you this. And it's a decent sized chappy too being well over 7500 words!**

Chapter Six

That woman doesn't know a damn thing about running a business," Dimitri grumbled as Ivan shot through an I-Pass lane at the York Road toll plaza heading east for the Eisenhower Expressway. "Neither of her numbers are working. We'll have to find her."

"Suits me," Ivan said. "I've got plenty of time before my date tonight."

Dimitri placed a call to his office, got Rose's Wicker Park address, and forty-five minutes later, they drew up in front of a tiny blue-and-lavender gingerbread house stuck between two very expensive-looking town houses. "Looks like Bo Peep's love nest," he said as Ivan pulled to the curb.

"The front door's open, so she's home." Ivan peered toward the house. "I'm going to run up to Earwax and grab some coffee while you fight with her. You want me to bring you back something?"

Dimitri shook his head. Earwax was a funky Milwaukee Avenue coffeehouse that had become a Wicker Park institution. Ivan, with his shaved head and tattoos, fit right in there, but then so did everybody else. Ivan drove off, and Dimitri made his way through an old iron gate leading to a doormat-size lawn containing neatly mowed crabgrass. He heard Rose's voice even before he reached the door.

"I'm doing my best, Mr. Dashkov."

"That last one was too old," a wheezy voice replied.

"She's nearly ten years younger than you are."

"Seventy-one. That's too old."

Stopping at the open door, Dimitri saw Rose standing in the middle of a cheery blue-and-yellow room that seemed to serve as her reception area. She wore a short white T-shirt, a pair of low-slung jeans, and rainbow flip-flops. She'd caught her hair up on top of her head in a messy bun of a little whale spout that made her look like a brunette Pebbles Flintstone, except with a better body.

A bald, elderly man with bushy eyebrows glowered down at her. "I told you I wanted a lady in her thirties."

"Mr. Dashkov, most women in their thirties are looking for a man who's a little closer to their own age."

"That shows what you know. Women like older men. They know that's where the money is."

Dimitri smiled, enjoying himself for the first time all day. As he stepped over the threshold, Rose spotted him. Her brown eyes widened as if a big bad dinosaur had shown up at the door of the Flintstones' cave. "Dimitri? What are you doing here?"

"You don't seem to be answering your phone."

"That's because she's been trying to dodge me," the elderly man interjected.

Rose's whale spout hairdo twitched indignantly. "I wasn't trying to dodge you. Look, Mr. Dashkov, I need to talk with Mr. Belikov. You and I can discuss this some other time."

"Oh, no you don't." Mr. Dashkov crossed his arms over his chest. "You're just trying to weasel out of that contract."

Dimitri made an open-handed, accommodating gesture. "Don't mind me. I'll just stand here and watch."

She shot him an exasperated look. He drew in the corners of his mouth and moved closer to the couch, which improved his view of her clingy white T-shirt. His eyes drifted down a trim pair of legs to her feet and then her toes, which were painted a sparkly grape with white polka dots. Pebbles had her own sense of style.

She returned her attention to her elderly visitor. "I don't weasel," she said hotly. "Mrs. Valerio happens to be a lovely woman, and you two have a lot in common."

"She's too old," the man shot back. "Satisfaction guaranteed, remember? That's what the contract said, and my nephew's a lawyer."

"So you've mentioned before."

"A good one, too. He went to a real good law school."

The steely glint that appeared in Rose's eyes didn't bode well for poor Mr. Dashkov. "As good as Harvard?" she said triumphantly. "Because that's where Mr. Belikov went to school, and"—she zeroed in on him—"he's my lawyer."

Dimitri lifted an eyebrow.

The old man studied him suspiciously, and Rose's cheeks plumped in a kitten-ate-the-cream smile. "Mr. Dashkov, this is Dimitri Belikov, otherwise known as the Python, but don't let that worry you. He hardly ever sends seniors to prison. Dimitri, Mr. Dashkov is one of my grandmother's former clients."

"Uh-huh."

Mr. Dashkov blinked but quickly recovered. "If you're her lawyer, maybe you'd better tell her how a contract works."

Rose bristled all over again. "Mr. Dashkov is under the impression that a contract he signed with my grandmother in 1986 is still valid and that I should honor it."

"It said satisfaction guaranteed," Mr. Dashkov retorted. "And I wasn't satisfied."

"You were married to Mrs. Dashkov for fifteen years!" Rose exclaimed. "I'd say you got your two hundred dollars' worth."

"I told you. She went loony on me. Now I want another one-Dimitri didn't know which was more amusing, Mr. Dashkov's jiggling eyebrows, or the indignant twitching of Pebbles's whale spout. "I'm not running a supermarket!" She spun on Dimitri. "Tell him!"

Ah, well. All good things had to come to an end. He went into lawyer mode. "Mr. Dashkov, apparently your contract was with Ms. Mazur's grandmother. And since the original terms seemed to have been fulfilled, I'm afraid you don't have grounds for complaint."

"What do you mean I don't have grounds? I got grounds, all right." Eyebrows hopping, he started hammering Rose with one grievance after another, none of which had anything to do with her. The more he ranted, the more Dimitri's amusement faded. He didn't like anybody but himself browbeating her.

"That's enough," he finally said.

The old guy must have realized Dimitri meant business because he stopped in midsentence. Dimitri moved closer, putting himself between Dashkov and Rose. "If you think you have a case, talk to your nephew. And while you're talking to him, ask him to fill you in on the laws against harassment."

The bushy eyebrows drooped like dying caterpillars, and the old guy's aggression instantly dissolved. "I never harassed nobody."

"That's not what it looks like to me," Dimitri said.

"I didn't mean to harass her." He wilted even more. "I was just trying to make a point."

"You've made it," Dimitri replied. "Now maybe you'd better leave."

His shoulders dipped, his head dropped. "Sorry, Rose." He made his way out the door.

A loose lock of Rose's hair whipped her cheek as she spun on Dimitri. "You didn't have to be so mean!"

"Mean?"

She hurried out on the porch, her flip-flops slapping the wooden boards. "Mr. Dashkov! Mr. Dashkov, stop! If you don't ask Mrs. Valerio out again, you're going to hurt her feelings. I know you don't want to do that."

His reply was subdued. "You're just trying to make me do what you want."

The flip-flops thumped more softly down the steps, and her voice grew wheedling. "Would that be so bad? Pretty please. She's a nice lady, and she likes you so much. Ask her out again. As a favor to me."

There was a long pause.

"All right," he replied with some of his former spunk. "But I'm not asking her out for Saturday night. That's when Iron Chef's on."

"Fair enough."

Rose returned, a satisfied smile on her face. Dimitri regarded her with amusement. "I sure hope I never have to go head to head with you in the wrestling ring."

A furrow formed along the bridge of her small nose. "You were mean. He's lonesome, and arguing with me gives him something to look forward to." She eyed him suspiciously. "What are you doing here?"

"Your phones aren't working."

"Sure they are." Her hand flew to her mouth. "Oh, jeez…

"Forgot to pay your bill?"

"Just for my cell. I know my other phone's working." She disappeared through the archway. He followed her into her office. Quality art posters filled the long wall behind her computer desk. He recognized a Chagall and one of Jasper Johns's white-on-white American flags.

She lifted the receiver and, when she didn't hear a dial tone, looked mystified. Dimitri picked up the cord dangling next to the ancient black answering machine. "It works better when it's plugged in."

Rose shoved it back in. "I was trying to fix it last night."

"Good job. You've never heard of voice mail?"

"This is cheaper."

"When it comes to keeping in touch with your clients, never cut corners."

"You're right. I know better."

The fact that she didn't try to argue took him aback. Most people went on the defensive when they screwed up.

"I don't make a habit of not paying my bills," she said. "I think what happened with my cell was subconscious. We're not getting along."

"Maybe counseling would help."

"In what universe did I ever think it was a good idea to let my mother find me whenever she wanted?" She sank down in the chair, her expression an entertaining combination of indignation and woe. "Tell me you're not here because you canceled your date with Rachel tonight."

"No. We're on."

"Then what's up?"

"A goodwill mission. I saw Lissa today at Stars headquarters, and she asked me to remind you about tomorrow. One o'clock."

"The party… I almost forgot." She cocked her head, suspicion back in those melted butterscotch eyes. "You drove all the way up here just to remind me about Mia's party?"

"Mia's party? I thought it was Lissa's."

"No."

This was even better. He picked up the small, pink Beanie Baby rabbit she kept on her computer monitor and examined it. "Do you go to a lot of parties at the Calebows?"

"A few," she said slowly. "Why?"

"I was thinking about tagging along." He turned the rabbit bottoms up and checked out its tail. "Or do you already have a date?"

"No, it's not—" She sank back into her desk chair, her eyes widening. "Wow. This is truly pathetic. You're using me to get to Mia. You can't get an invitation to her parties on your own, and now you're using me."

"Pretty much." He returned the rabbit to its perch.

"You're not even embarrassed."

"It's hard to embarrass an agent."

"I don't get it. Mia and Dan invite everybody to their parties."

"She and I are going through a bumpy period, that's all. I need to smooth things out."

"And you think you can do that at a party?"

"I figure she'll be more relaxed in a social situation."

"How long has this bumpy period been going on?"

"About seven years."

"Ouch."

He studied the Jasper Johns poster. "I was overly aggressive when I started out, and I made her look bad. I've apologized, but she can't seem to get past it."

"I'm not sure this is the best way to fix your problem with her."

"Look, Rose, do you want to help me or not?"

"It's just that—"

"Right," he said abruptly. "I keep forgetting we have different philosophies about running a business. I like to please my clients, and you don't care. But then maybe you enjoy limiting yourself to senior citizens."

She shot up from her chair, whale spout quivering. "Fine. You want to go to the party with me tomorrow, go ahead."

"Great. I'll pick you up at noon. What's the dress code?"

"I'm so tempted to tell you black tie."

"Casual then." Through the window, he spotted Ivan pulling up to the curb. He propped a hip on the corner of her desk. "Let's not mention to Mia that I asked you to bring me along. Just tell her you think I've been working too hard, and I need a little relaxation before I meet any more of those women you have lined up."

"Mia's not stupid. You don't really think she'll believe that?"

"If you're convincing she will." He straightened and headed for the door. "Successful people create their own reality, Rose. Grab the ball and get in the game."

Before she could tell him that she was already playing as hard as she knew how, he was on his way down her sidewalk. She walked over to the door and shut it behind him. Once again, he'd seen her at her worst: no makeup, phones out of order, and wrangling with Mr. Dashkov. On the positive side, Rachel was going to look really good to him this evening by comparison.

Rose wondered if they'd sleep together. The idea depressed her way too much. She headed for the kitchen and poured herself a glass of iced tea, then carried it back to her office, where she called Aaron Drozdov to check on the lunch date she'd arranged.

"She had a cold, Rose. Noticeable congestion."

"Aaron, women come with germs."

"It's a question of degree."

She wondered how Dimitri would deal with a hypochondriacal client. "She wants to see you again," she said, "but if you're not interested, I have other clients who will be."

"Well… She's very pretty."

"And germy, like every other woman I've fixed you up with. Can you handle that?"

Aaron eventually decided he'd give it a go. She dragged out the vacuum and made a few desultory swipes at the downstairs, then filled a pitcher to water Nana's African violet collection. As she added a few drops of fertilizer, she contemplated arranging a date between Mrs. Porter and Mr. Clemens. They were both widowers in their seventies, two more of Nana's clients she couldn't quite shake. Mrs. Porter was black and Mr. Clemens white, which might give their families trouble, but Rose had sensed a lot of interest when she'd run into them at the grocery store, and they both loved to bowl. She carried the pitcher into her office. Would she ever get rid of these seniors? No matter how many times she explained to them that Marriages by Myrna had closed its doors, they kept on showing up. Even worse, they expected her to continue charging Nana's fees.

When she finished with the African violets, she sat down to pay bills. Thanks to Dimitri's check, she'd settled the worst of them. Yesterday she'd called Melanie to see if she'd be interested in signing on as a client, which had meant coming clean about her real occupation. Fortunately, Melanie had a sense of humor, and she'd seemed interested. Things were looking up.

The Little Mermaid clock on her desk ticked away. Dimitri would be picking up Rachel about now. They were going to Tru, where caviar appeared at the table in a miniature glass staircase and dinner for two could easily run four hundred dollars. Not that she'd ever been there herself, but she'd read about it.

She considered visiting a couple of local coffee shops to pass out her business card, but she didn't have enough energy to change clothes. Friday night. No hot date. No prospects for a hot date. The matchmaker needed a matchmaker. She wanted to get married, wanted a family, a job she loved… Was that too much to ask out of life? But how would she ever find a man of her own if she had to keep giving the best ones away? Not that Dimitri was the best. He was husband material only in his own mind. No, that wasn't entirely fair. Whatever he did, he did well, and he'd give marriage his best effort. Whether or not that would prove good enough remained to be seen. Fortunately, not her problem.

She pulled out a DVD of Waiting for Guffman, then remembered it belonged to Jessie and chose Freaky Friday instead. She'd just gotten to the part where Jamie Lee Curtis and her daughter switch bodies when the phone rang.

"Rose, it's Rachel."

She hit the Stop button. "How's it going?"

"I'm out of my league."

"What do you mean? Where are you calling from?"

"The ladies' room at Tru. The date's not working. I can't understand it. Dimitri and I had so much fun together the night you introduced us—you remember—but now everything feels flat."

"I knew he'd do this. He's been on his cell all night, hasn't he?"

"He hasn't taken a single call. In fact, he's been a perfect gentleman. But we're both working too hard to keep the conversation going."

"He's been traveling all week. He might be tired."

"I don't think it's that. It's just— Nothing's happening. I'm really disappointed. I felt sparks that first time. Didn't you?"

"Definitely. Ask him about his work. Or about baseball. He's a Sox fan. Just keep trying."

Rachel said she would, but she didn't seem optimistic, and when Rose hung up, she felt deflated… and relieved.

One more reason to be depressed.

Moths swarmed in the caged lights over the doors. The bar, located in a former warehouse just off North Avenue, was named Suey, and the sign featured a giant red pig wearing a trucker's cap. "Charming," Tasha drawled.

Ivan gave her a dumb, cocky grin, which went right along with his menacing shaved head, intimidating tattoos, and hit man's muscles. "I knew you'd like it."

"I was being sarcastic."

"Why?"

"Because this is a sports bar."

"You don't like sports bars? That's weird." He held the door open for her.

She rolled her eyes and followed him in. The place was huge and noisy, smelling of stale beer, french fries, and aftershave, all topped off with eau de gym. The bar opened into a bigger room with tables, games, and cinder-block walls displaying the logos of the Chicago teams. She glimpsed an even larger area in the back holding metal lockers and a sand volleyball court surrounded by orange plastic fencing. Blow-up sex dolls, beer signs, and Star Wars light sabers hung from the open rafters. Boys would be boys. Thankfully, not the sort of place her friends would be prone to hang out.

She'd dressed down for the evening, digging out an old pair of magenta cotton slacks, a clingy navy top with a built-in bra, and flat sandals. She'd even traded in her diamond studs for simple silver hoops. She followed Ivan past a rowdy group of twenty-somethings who were ignoring the overhead televisions to do tequila shots at the bar. As the crowd parted, she grew conscious of the women's eyes on Ivan. A few greeted him by name. Muscle-bound men always tended to look sloppy, but his espresso brown polo shirt and chinos couldn't have fit him better, and every woman in the place noticed.

She slipped into his wake, which was large enough to keep people from bumping against her, and let him lead her to a table that afforded a view of a mechanical bull and the volleyball game in the next room. Ordering either wine or a mixed drink struck her as high risk, so she settled on a lite beer, but asked that it be served in the bottle. Easier to guard against roofies.

He kicked back with his own beer and openly studied her. "How old are you?"

"Old enough to know this is the worst date of my life."

"Women like you are hard to figure. Your skin is great, but you've got old eyes."

"Anything else?" she asked coldly.

"I figure forty-three, forty-four."

"I'm thirty-seven," she snapped.

"No, I'm thirty-seven. You're forty-two. I did some research."

"Then why did you ask?"

"I wanted to see if you give yourself away when you lie." Amusement danced in his pale eyes. "Now I know."

She resisted taking the bait. "Is this date over yet?"

"Just getting started. I think we should wait till after we play to eat, don't you?"

"Play?"

He jerked his head toward the volleyball court. "We've got a game in forty minutes."

"Oh, right. And that would be just after I walk out, right?"

"I already signed us up. You have to play."

"Wrongo."

"I should have told you to bring shorts."

"You probably had too many other weighty matters on your mind."

He smiled. "You are one beautiful bitch."

"Thank you."

His smile grew broader, and her skin prickled. Once again, she considered the possibility that he wasn't as dumb as he seemed to be.

"Definitely a ballbuster," he said. "This is my lucky day." She flinched as he reached toward her, but when he touched the base of her throat with the tip of his finger, a tiny shock zipped along her skin. "You and me are going to be great together… as long as I keep that dog collar snapped good and tight around your neck."

Another jolt zapped her nerve endings, and she jerked away. Fortunately, three of the men who'd been hanging out at the bar chose that moment to approach. They were all young and respectful. Ivan introduced her, but they were only interested in him. She learned he'd played pro football, and as the men talked sports, she experienced the unusual, and not unwelcome, feeling of being invisible. She let herself relax a little. When the youngsters drifted away, however, she knew it was time to take control. "Tell me about yourself, Ivan. Where are you from?"

He studied her, almost as if he were making up his mind how much he wanted to reveal. "A dot on the map in southern Illinois."

"Small-town boy."

"You might say. I grew up in a trailer park, the only kid in the place." He took a sip of beer. "My bedroom looked out over a junkyard."

His rough background was written all over him, so she wasn't surprised. "What about your parents?"

"My mother died when I was four, and my father was a good-looking drunk who had a way with the ladies. Believe me, there were a lot of them around while I was growing up."

It was all so sordid that Tasha wished she hadn't asked. She thought of her ex-husband, with his impeccable pedigree, of the dozens of other men she'd dated over the years, some of them self-made, but all polished and well mannered. Yet here she was in a sports bar with a man who looked like he made his living stuffing dead bodies in car trunks. One more sign that her life was veering away from her.

Ivan excused himself, and she checked her cell. A message had come in from Juanita Brooks, the director of the Community Small Business Initiative. Tasha immediately returned it. Volunteering with the CSBI had helped fill the hole left in her life by her divorce. Although she'd never confess it to anyone, she wanted validation—proof that she was the best—and mentoring these new businesswomen was giving her that. She had so much hard-earned wisdom to offer. If only they would listen to her.

"Tasha, I've spoken with Mary Churso," Juanita said. "I know you were excited about advising her, but… she's asked to be assigned to someone else."

"Someone else? But that's not possible. I've spent so much time with her. I've worked so hard. How could she do that?"

"I think she was a little intimidated," Juanita said. "Just like the others." She hesitated for a moment. "I appreciate your commitment, Tasha. Truly I do. But most of the women who come to us need to be nurtured a bit more gently." Tasha listened incredulously as Juanita explained that she had no one else currently in mind for her to work with, but that she'd let her know if someone "special" came along. Then she hung up.

Tasha couldn't believe it. She felt as if a giant fist had squeezed all the air from her lungs. How could Juanita steal this from her? She fought off her panic with anger. The woman was a terrible administrator. The absolute worst. She'd effectively fired Tasha for expecting the best from these women instead of patronizing them.

Just then Ivan reappeared. He was exactly the distraction she needed, and she shoved her cell in her purse to watch him approach. A white T-shirt molded to his chest, and black athletic shorts displayed the powerful musculature of his legs, one of which had a long, puckered scar. She was shocked to feel her senses quickening.

"Showtime." He pulled her to her feet.

Juanita had unhinged her so much that she'd forgotten about the game. "I'm not doing this."

"Sure you are." He ignored her protests as he steered her toward the volleyball court. "Hey, guys, this is Tasha. She's a volleyball pro from the West Coast."

"Hey, Tasha."

All but two of the players were male. One of the women wore shorts and looked like she meant business. The other was dressed in street clothes and also seemed to have been dragged into the game. Tasha hated doing things she wasn't good at. She hadn't played volleyball since her freshman year in college, and the only part of her game that had ever amounted to anything was her serve.

Ivan slipped his fingers around the back of her neck and squeezed just firmly enough to remind her of his dog collar remark. "Kick off those sandals and show us what you've got."

He didn't believe she'd do it. This was a test, and he expected her to fail. Well, she wouldn't fail. Not again. Not after what had just happened with Juanita. She kicked off her sandals and stepped into the sand. He inclined his head—a mark of respect?—and turned away to address another player.

The ball didn't come close to her until several minutes into the game when it shot right at her chest. She couldn't get under it, and she pushed it into the net. As it came out, Ivan dove for it, sending up a spray of sand and somehow managing to get it up and over. He was an amazing athlete, intensely physical, quick, and intimidating. He was also a team player, setting up shots for the others instead of hogging the ball. Tasha played hard, but other than scoring a point on a serve, she was a liability. Still, with Ivan taking up the slack next to her, their team won both games, and as she celebrated with them, she felt an odd exhilaration. She wanted Juanita Brooks—everybody at the Community Small Business Initiative—to see her now.

She cleaned up as well as she could in the restroom, but only a shower would remove the grit that had made its way into her hair and between her toes. She returned to the table just as Ivan reappeared in his street clothes. The bar didn't have showers, so he shouldn't have smelled so good, of agreeable male exertion, piney soap, and clean clothes. As he took his seat, the sleeve of his knit shirt rode up on his biceps, revealing more of the intricate tribal tattoo that encircled it. He grinned. "You sucked."

No one else was getting the best of her tonight. "Now you've gone and hurt my feelings," she cooed.

"God, I can't wait to get you into bed."

Another of those unnerving shocks skittered through her. She snatched up the beer he'd ordered for her and took a sip, but it was too warm to cool her off. "You're assuming a lot."

"Not so much." He leaned in. "How else can you make sure I'll keep my mouth shut around Dimitri? It's the damnedest thing, but I can't seem to forget that little spying episode."

"You're blackmailing me with sex?"

"Why not?" He settled back in his chair with a crooked grin. "It'll give you a good excuse to do what you want to anyway."

If another man had delivered a line like that, she would have laughed in his face, but the pit of her stomach dipped. She had the oddest feeling Ivan knew something about her that other people didn't understand, maybe something she'd missed herself. "You're delusional."

He rubbed his knuckles. "There's nothing I love more than sexually dominating a strong woman."

Her fingers tightened around the bottle, not because she felt threatened—he was enjoying himself too much—but because his words aroused her. "Maybe you should talk to a shrink."

"And spoil all our fun? I don't think so."

No one ever played sexual games with her. She crossed her legs and gave him a withering smile. "You deluded little man."

He leaned forward and whispered against her earlobe. "One of these nights I'm going to make you pay for that." And then he bit.

She nearly groaned, not with pain—he wasn't hurting her— but with an unsettling excitement. Fortunately, one of the men from the volleyball game came up to the table, so Ivan backed off, giving her a chance to regain her balance.

Their food arrived shortly afterward. Ivan had ordered without consulting her, then had the nerve to chastise her for not eating. "You don't really bite into anything. You just lick. No wonder you're scrawny."

"You silver-tongued devil."

"As long as your mouth's open…" He slipped in a french fry. She savored the shock of the grease and the salt but turned away when he offered another. More volleyball players stopped by the table. As Ivan chatted with them, she automatically surveyed the women in the bar. Several were quite beautiful, and she itched to give them her card, but she couldn't motivate herself to get up. Ivan's presence had sucked the oxygen out of the room, leaving the air too thin for her to breathe.

By the time they left the sports bar and entered the lobby of her building, she'd grown almost giddy with desire. She mentally rehearsed how she'd handle him. He knew exactly the effect he was having on her, so of course he expected her to invite him up. She wouldn't, but he'd get in the elevator anyway, and she'd respond with cool amusement. Perfect.

But Ivan Zeklos had one more surprise up his sleeve. "Good night, slugger." With nothing more than a kiss on the forehead, he walked away.

Saturday morning Rose got up early and headed for Roscoe Village, a former haven for drug dealers that had been gentrified in the 1990s. Now it was a pretty urban neighborhood with refurbished houses and charming shops that projected a small-town feel. She was meeting the daughter of one of Nana's former neighbors in her storefront architectural office on Roscoe Street. She'd heard the woman was exceptionally pretty, and she wanted to meet her in person to see if she'd be a match for Dimitri.

As it turned out, the woman was lovely but nearly as hyperactive as he was, a surefire recipe for disaster. Rose considered her a good prospect for a match though, and she decided to keep her eyes open.

A hunger pang reminded her that she hadn't taken time for breakfast. Since Dimitri wasn't picking her up until noon, she made her way across the street to Victory's Banner, a cheery, pocket-size vegetarian cafe operated by the followers of one of the Indian spiritual masters. Instead of a musty, incense-scented interior, Victory's Banner had powder blue walls, sunny yellow banquettes, and chalk white tables that matched the tieback curtains at the windows. She took an empty table and began to order one of her favorites, homemade French toast with peach butter and real maple syrup, only to be distracted by a platter of golden-brown Belgian waffles passing by. She finally settled on apple pecan pancakes.

As she took her first sip of coffee, the door to the restroom at the back opened and a familiar figure emerged. Rose's heart sank. The woman would have been tall even without her high-heeled woven slides. She was broad shouldered and well dressed in crisp white slacks and a short-sleeved coral blouse that complemented her shoulder-length light brown hair. Her makeup was "well applied with subtle eye shadow that emphasized her familiar dark eyes.

The cafe was too small to hide in, and Jessica spotted Rose right away. She clutched her straw purse more tightly. Her big, broad hands had long, toffee-painted nails and a trio of gold bracelets encircling one wrist. It had been nearly six months since Rose had last seen her. Jessica's face was thinner, her hips rounder. She approached the table, and Rose experienced an all-too-familiar barrage of emotions: anger and betrayal, compassion and repulsion… a painful tenderness.

Jessica shifted her purse from one hand to the other and spoke in her low, melodious voice. "I just finished breakfast, but… Would you mind some company?"

Yes, I'd mind, Rose wanted to say, but she'd only feel guilty afterward, so she tilted her head in the general direction of the opposite chair. Jessica tucked her purse in her lap and ordered an iced chai, then began fiddling with a bracelet. "I hear through the grapevine that you landed a big client."

"Grapevine Lissa."

Jessica gave her a wry smile. "You don't call, you don't write. Lissa's my only source of information. She's been a good friend."

Unlike Rose, who hadn't. She concentrated on her coffee. Jessica finally broke the awkward silence. "So how's Hurricane Janine these days?"

"Her usual interfering self. She wants me to get an accounting degree."

"She worries about you."

Rose set her cup down too hard, and coffee sloshed over the brim. "I can't imagine why."

"Don't try to blame all your troubles with Janine on me. She's always driven you crazy."

"Yes, well, our situation sure didn't help."

"No, it didn't," Jessica said.

Rose had waited nearly a week after her world had crashed to call her mother, hoping by then she could manage her announcement without crying.

"Jessie and I've called off our engagement, Mom."

She still remembered Janine's screech. "What are you talking about?"

"We're not getting married."

"But the wedding's only two months away. And we love Jessie. Everybody does. He's the only man you've dated who has a head on his shoulders. You complement each other perfectly."

"Turns out too perfectly. Get ready to laugh." Her voice had caught on a snag. "Turns out Jessie is a woman trapped in a man's body."

"Rose, have you been drinking? "

Rose had explained it to her mother just as Jessie had explained it to her—how he'd felt wrong in his body for as long as he could remember; the nervous breakdown he'd suffered the year before they'd met but never quite gotten around to mentioning; his belief that loving her would cure him; and his final realization that he couldn't keep on living if he had to do it as a man.

Janine had started to cry and Rose had cried right along with her.

She'd felt so stupid for not suspecting the truth, but Jessie had been a decent lover, and they'd had an okay sex life. He was nice looking, funny, and sensitive, but she hadn't considered him effeminate. She never caught him trying on her clothes or using her makeup, and until that awful night when he'd started to cry and told her he couldn't go on any longer trying to be someone he wasn't, she'd assumed he was the love of her life.

Looking back, there'd been hints: his moodiness, frequent references to an unhappy childhood, odd questions about Rose's experiences growing up as a girl. She'd been flattered by the attention he'd paid to her opinions, and she'd told her friends how lucky she was to have a fiancé who was so interested in her as a person. Never once had she suspected he was gathering information, weighing her experiences against his own so he could make his final decision. After he'd broken the devastating news, he'd told her he still loved her as much as ever. She'd cried and asked him exactly what he expected her to do about that?

Her broken dreams had been painful enough, but she'd also had to face the humiliation of telling her friends and relatives.

"You remember my ex-fiancé Jessie. Funniest thing …"

Try as she might, she couldn't get past what she'd come to think of as the "ick factor." She'd made love with a man who wanted to be a woman. She found no comfort in his explanation that gender identity and sexuality were two different issues. He'd known this monster hung over them when they'd fallen in love, but he hadn't said a word about it until the afternoon she'd had her bridal gown fitted. That evening, he'd taken his first dose of estrogen and begun his transition from Jessie into Jessica.

Nearly two years had passed since then, and Rose still hadn't overcome her sense of betrayal. At the same time, she couldn't pretend not to care. "How's the job?" Jessica was the longtime marketing director at Lissa's publishing company, Birdcage Press. She and Lissa had worked closely together to grow the market for Lissa's award-winning Daphne the Bunny children's books.

"People are finally getting used to me."

"I'm sure it wasn't easy." For a while Rose had wanted it to be hard, wanted her old lover to suffer, but she didn't feel that way now. Now she simply wanted to forget.

The woman who'd once been her fiancé gazed at her across the table. "I just wish that…"

"Don't say it."

"You were my best friend, Rose. I want that back."

The old bitterness resurfaced. "I know you do, but you can't have it."

"Would it help if I told you I'm not sexually attracted to you anymore? Apparently the hormones have done a job on me. For the first time in my life, I've started to look at men. Very strange."

"Tell me about it."

Jessica laughed, and Rose managed a smile in return, but as much as she wished Jessica well, she couldn't be her confidante. Their relationship had robbed her of too much. Not only had she lost trust in her ability to judge people, but she'd also lost her sexual confidence. What kind of loser could be in an intimate relationship for so long without suspecting that something was seriously askew?

Her pancakes arrived. Jessica rose and regarded her sadly. "I'll let you eat in peace. It's been good seeing you."

The most Rose could manage in return was a quiet "Good luck."

Do you get invited to many of Mia and Dan's parties?" Dimitri asked a few hours later as he steered his BMW into the long, wooded drive that led to the Rinaldi/Calebow home. A hawk circled in the afternoon sun above the old orchard to their right, where the apples were just beginning to turn red. "A few," she replied. "But, then, Mia likes me."

"Go ahead and laugh, but it's not funny to me. I've lost some great clients because of this."

"I'd be lying if I didn't tell you it's nice having you at my mercy for a change."

"Don't enjoy it too much. I'm trusting you not to screw this up."

She was afraid she already had. She should have been up front with him about today's affair, but she always got pigheaded when workaholics started ordering her around, another legacy from her childhood.

The tires clattered on a narrow wooden bridge. They rounded a bend, and an old stone farmhouse came into sight. Build in the 1880s, the Calebow property was a rustic gem in an area of affluent suburban sprawl. Dan had bought the house in his bachelor days, and as their family had grown, he and Mia had added wings, raised the roof, and expanded the grounds. The end result was a charming ramble of a house perfect for a family with four growing children.

Dimitri parked in the drive next to Lissa's SUV, which had Tigger sunshades suction-cupped to the glass. He shifted his weight and tucked his keys in the hip pocket of his khaki slacks. He wore them with a designer polo and another of his TAG Heuer watches, this one with a brown crocodile strap. Rose felt a little underdressed in gray knit drawstring shorts, aqua tank top, and J. Crew flip-flops.

She saw the exact moment when he spotted the multitude of pink balloons tied to the spindled railing that surrounded the old-fashioned front porch.

He turned to her slowly, a python uncoiling for the strike. "Exactly what kind of party is this?"

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and tried to look adorable. "Uh, funny you should ask…"

His grim green eyes belatedly reminded Rose that he had no sense of humor when it came to business. Not that she'd exactly forgotten it.

"No bullshit, Rose. Tell me right now what's going on."

He'd trample her if she tried to stage a retreat, so she attempted a chipper sort of savoir faire. "Relax and enjoy yourself. It'll be fun." She didn't sound convincing, but before he could crush the life out of her, Lissa appeared on the front porch with Pippi at her side. Both of them sported glittery pink tiaras, Pippi's accessorized with a strawberry pink princess gown, Lissa's with bright yellow capris and a Daphne the Bunny T-shirt. Dimitri's already grim expression grew even more forbidding.

Lissa looked startled, then laughed as she spotted Dimitri. He shot Rose a life-threatening glare, plastered a smile on his face for Lissa, and stepped out of the car. Rose grabbed her tote and followed. Unfortunately, the knot that had begun to form in her stomach came right along with her.

"Dimitri? I don't believe it," Lissa said. "I couldn't even talk Chris into helping out today."

"Is that so?" he replied slowly. "Rose invited me."

Lissa gave her a thumbs-up. "Cool."

Rose forced a smile.

Dimitri walked toward Lissa, projecting an air of amusement Rose knew he didn't feel. "Rose neglected, however, to tell me exactly what she was inviting me to."

"Oops." Lissa's eyes sparkled.

"I would have if you'd asked." Rose's words sounded lame even to herself, and he ignored her.

Lissa leaned down to her daughter. "Pippi, tell Mr. Dimitri about our party."

The three-year-old's tiara wobbled as she jumped and gave an ear-splitting shriek. "Princess party!"

"Ya don't say," Dimitri drawled. Slowly, he turned to face Rose. She pretended to examine the climbing rose next to the front porch.

"It was Julie and Tess's idea," Lissa said. "Rose volunteered to help out."

Rose thought about explaining that Julie and Tess were the Calebows' oldest children, fifteen-year-old twins, then realized Dimitri wouldn't need an explanation. He'd have made it his business to know all about Dan and Mia's four children: the twins, twelve-year-old Hannah, and nine-year-old Andrew. He probably knew their favorite foods and when they'd had their last dental checkups.

"The twins are volunteering at a summer day care center that serves low-income families," Lissa went on. "They work with the four- and five-year-old girls, supervising activities to jump-start them in math and science. They wanted to throw a party just for fun."

"Princess party!" Pippi shrieked again, hopping up and down.

"I can't tell you how glad I am you're here," Lissa said. "Tess and Julie woke up with fevers this morning, so we've been a little frantic. Hannah's going to help, but she gets emotionally involved, so she's not entirely reliable. I tried to call Chris and beg him to reconsider, but he and Dan have taken the boys somewhere and they're not picking up. Wait till they hear who saved them."

"My pleasure." Dimitri projected such sincerity that Rose would have believed him if she hadn't known better. No wonder he was so good at what he did.

They heard the sound of an engine and saw a yellow minibus approaching. Lissa turned to the door. "Hannah, the girls are here!"

Seconds later, twelve-year-old Hannah Calebow emerged. Thin and awkward, she resembled her Aunt Lissa more than her mother, Mia. Her light brown hair, expressive eyes and slightly asymmetrical features bore the promise of something more interesting than conventional prettiness when she grew older, although at this point it was hard to tell exactly what. "Hi, Rose," she said as she came forward.

Rose returned the greeting, and Lissa introduced Dimitri as the minibus stopped in front of the house. "Rose, why don't you and Dimitri help Mia in the backyard while Hannah and I get the girls unloaded?"

"Maybe you should be a little careful around Mom," Hannah said in a soft, anxious-to-please voice. "She's in a bad mood because Andrew got into the cake this morning."

"It just keeps getting better and better," Dimitri muttered. And then he headed for the flagstone path that led around the side of the house. He walked so quickly that Rose had to trot to catch up with him.

"I guess I should apologize," she said. "I'm afraid I might have let my—"

"Not one word," he said on a single ominous note. "You screwed me over, and we don't have a thing to say to each other."

She hurried to his side. "I wasn't trying to screw you over. I thought—"

"Save your breath. You wanted me to look stupid."

She hoped that wasn't true but suspected it might be. Not stupid, exactly. Just not so together. "You're totally overreacting."

That was when the Python struck.

"You're fired."

She stumbled on one of the flagstones. There was no emotion in his voice, no expression of regret for good times and shared laughs, only a stony declaration.

"You can't mean that."

"Oh, I mean it, all right."

"It's a kids' party! It's no big deal."

He walked away without another word.

She stood chilled and silent in the shadow of an old elm. She'd done it again. Once more, she'd let her impulsiveness lead her into disaster. She knew him well enough by now to understand how much he hated being put at a disadvantage. How could she have believed he'd find this amusing? Maybe she hadn't. Maybe the person she'd really intended to sabotage was herself.

Her mother was right. It couldn't be entirely coincidental that everything Rose attached herself to failed. Did she believe she didn't deserve success? Was that why all her ventures ended in disaster?

She leaned against the trunk of the elm and tried not to cry.

 **AN/ PS Sorry.**


	7. Chapter 7

**AN: Sorry for the delay but here is the next chapter!**

Chapter Seven

Dimitri was furious. He didn't like looking foolish under any circumstances, but especially not in front of Mia Rinaldi. Yet here he was, completely out of his element. If the party had involved teenagers, he'd have been fine. He liked teenagers. He knew how to talk to them. But little kids—little female kids—were a mystery to him.

His anger against Rose grew. She thought putting one over on him was funny, but nothing involving Mia amused him. Where business was concerned, he didn't play games. Rose knew that, but she'd decided to test him, and he'd had to cut her off at the knees. He wouldn't let it bother him, either. Sentiment and second-guessing were for losers.

He focused on the Calebows' backyard with its swimming pool, climbing trees, and open stretch of well-used yard, all of it designed for a large family. This afternoon, pink filmy crap hung from the trees, around the flagstone patio, and over the jungle gym. It also festooned tiny tables where pink balloons bobbed in the breeze above the back of each small chair. Glittery dresses like the one Pippi Ozera wore spilled from pink cardboard cartons, and a battered pink wagon held a pile of plastic slippers. Fake pink jewels decorated a throne-shaped chair sitting in the middle of the patio. Only the green dragon piñata dangling from the branch of a maple tree had escaped the pink plague.

He'd always been comfortable in his body, but now he felt awkward and out of place. He glanced toward the swimming pool and experienced a flicker of hope. In a pool, he'd be right at home. Unfortunately, the iron gate was padlocked. Apparently Lissa and Mia had decided supervising so many little kids around water was too dangerous, but he'd have supervised the damn kids. He liked danger. If he'd gotten lucky, one of the little buggers would have gone under for a while, and he could have saved her from drowning. That would have caught Mia's attention.

The Stars' owner stood behind the farthest of the little tables, setting out some kind of cardboard whoogees. Like everybody else, she had one of those frickin' pink crowns on her head, and he regarded her with a profound sense of personal insult. Team owners should wear Stetsons or go bareheaded. No other options.

Mia chose that moment to look up. Her eyes widened in surprise, and she dropped one of the cardboard whoogees. "Dimitri?"

"Hey, Mia."

"Well. And isn't this special?" She snatched up the— whatever-the-hell they were. "As much as I'd love to climb into the trenches with you for another round of mud wrestling, I'm a little busy now."

"Rose thought you could use some help."

"And you're it? I don't think so."

He arranged his mouth in his most disarming smile. "I'll admit I'm a little out of my element, but if you point me in the right direction, I'll give it my best."

Instead of charming her, he'd made her suspicious, and her face assumed its customary distrustful expression. Before she could interrogate him, however, an army of little girls charged around the corner. Some of them held hands, others walked by themselves. They came in different shapes, different colors, and one of them was crying.

"New places can be scary," he heard Hannah say, "but everybody here is very, very nice. And if you get really scared, come and tell me. I'll take you for a walk. Also, if you need to go to the potty, I'll show you where it is. Our doggie is all locked up so she can't jump on anybody. And if you see a bee, tell one of the grown-ups."

This must be what Lissa had meant when she'd said that Hannah got emotionally involved.

Lissa stepped toward the pink cardboard boxes. "Every princess needs a beautiful gown, and here are yours." A few of the bolder girls rushed forward.

Mia thrust the whoogees in his hand. "Put one of these at each place. And you'd better not charge me for it." She hurried away to help.

Rose was nowhere to be seen. He'd come down on her hard, and he wasn't surprised that she needed time to recover. He ignored an unpleasant twinge in his gut. She'd brought this on herself when she'd crossed the line. He studied the whoogees, pink cardboard starbursts glued to the ends of wooden dowels. His mood grew gloomier. They must be magic wands. What the hell did magic wands have to do with helping girls learn math and science? He'd been good at both. He could have helped them with math and science. Weren't these girls supposed to be building skills? Screw magic wands. He'd have handed out some fucking calculators.

He tossed the wands on the table and looked around for Rose, but she still hadn't appeared, which was starting to bother him. Even though he'd needed to sack her, he didn't want to destroy her. High-pitched screams emerged from the gown boxes. Although the girls looked like an army, there were only fifteen or so of them. Something brushed his leg, and he gazed down into the face of Pippi Ozera. The theme from Jaws raced through his head.

The three-year-old's gown was the color of Pepto-Bismol, her eyes green gumballs of innocence. Only the rakish tilt of the pink tiara in her blond curls hinted at a desperado's heart. She held out a tiara she was clutching in her grubby little fist. "You gotta wear a crown."

"Not in this lifetime." He gave her a ministare, enough to get his point across without making her scream for her mother.

Her small, pale eyebrows shot together just like her father's when he spotted a safety blitz.

"Dimitri!" Lissa's voice emerged from a pool of gowns, sequins, and little girls. "Keep your eye on Pippi till we get everybody dressed, will you?"

"My pleasure." He looked down at the kid.

The kid looked up at him.

He studied her gumball eyes and pink tiara.

She scratched her arm.

He searched his brain and finally came up with something. "Anybody ever teach you how to use a calculator?"

The squeals emanating from the direction of the gown box grew louder. Pippi tipped her chin to get a better view of him, and her tiara scooted farther back on her head. "You got some bubbles?"

"What?"

"I like bubbles."

"Uh-huh."

Her eyes darted to his pockets. "Where's your phone?"

"Let's go see how your mother's doing."

"I wanna see your phone."

"Give me back my old one first, and then we'll talk."

She grinned. "I luvvvv phones."

"Tell me about it."

Last month when he'd dropped by the Ozera house, he'd been left alone with their little adorable for a few minutes. She'd demanded to see his cell. It was a brand-new state-of-the-art Blackberry equipped with enough peripherals so he could basically run his business from it, but he hadn't seen the harm. Just as he'd handed it over, however, Chris had called from the other room asking Dimitri to look at a piece of game film, and that was the last he'd seen of it.

He'd managed to get her alone before he'd left and tried to cross-examine her, but all of a sudden the kid no hablo-ed the ingles. As a result, he'd lost a couple of dozen important e-mails and the final notes on a new contract. Later, Ivan had said Dimitri should have just told Chris what had happened, but Chris and Lissa were starry-eyed when it came to their kids, and Dimitri couldn't imagine saying anything they could interpret as criticism of their little darling.

She stomped a foot in the grass. "Wanna see phone now."

"Forget it."

She screwed up her face. Oh, shit, she was going to cry. He knew from past experience that the tiniest sound of dismay coming from her moppet's mouth sent Lissa's head spinning. Where the hell was Rose? He whipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out his newest cell. I'll hold it while you look." He knelt at her side.

She made a grab. "I wanna hold it."

Dimitri would never for a moment have let it go—he wasn't that stupid—but Rose chose that particular instant to make her appearance, and he was so surprised by what he saw that he lost track.

A queen of England—size crown nestled in her wild tumble of curls, and she wore a long silvery gown. Shimmering rhinestones sprinkled the fluffy skirt, and a wisp of silver netting framed her bare shoulders. As she walked onto the grass, the sun struck her from every direction, setting her hair on fire and striking sparks in the rhinestones. No wonder the shrieking little girls fell silent. He was fairly awestruck himself.

For a moment, he forgot how pissed he was with her. Although the gown was a costume and the tiara fake, she seemed almost magical, and something inside him didn't want to look away. Most of the girls were dressed by now, their tiny pink gowns pulled on over shorts and T-shirts. As Rose approached them, he spotted her flip-flops peeking from under the hem of her gown. For some weird reason, they seemed just right.

"Greetings, my little beauties," she trilled, sounding like the good witch in The Wizard of Oz. "I'm Rosemarie, your fairy godmother. I'm going to ask each of you your name and then cast a magic spell that will turn you into an official princess. Are you ready?"

Their shrill squeals seemed to indicate they were.

"After I do that," she went on, "I'll help you make your own magic wand to take home."

Dimitri snatched up the wands he'd dumped in a heap and began tossing them among the pots of pink glitter and plastic jewels on the tables. Rose moved along the row of little girls, leaned down to ask each child her name, then waved her own wand over the child's head. "I dub thee Princess Kee-sha… I dub thee Princess Anna… I dub thee Princess Dominga… I dub thee Princess Phoebe."

Damn it! Dimitri whirled around, remembering too late that the kid had his phone. He searched the grass where they'd been standing and checked his pockets, but his cell was nowhere to be seen. He turned toward the girls, and there she stood, a pint-size phone felon with empty hands and a crooked pink tiara on her head.

The kid was only three, and hardly any time had passed. How far could she have gone with it? As he considered his next move, Mia popped up at his side with a Polaroid camera. "We want a picture of each of the girls sitting on the throne in her costume. Will you take them for free," she cooed, "or are you going to put a lien on their tooth fairy money?"

"Mia, I'm wounded."

"Not to worry. I doubt you'll bleed." She plopped the camera in his hand, and off she went, pink tiara aglitter, ill will oozing from every pore. Great. So far, he'd managed to fire his matchmaker and lose another cell without getting one step closer to repairing his relationship with the Stars' owner. And the party was just getting started.

Rose finished the naming ceremony, then she and Lissa guided some of the girls to the tables to decorate their wands while Mia and Hannah led the others toward a tray of lipsticks and eye shadows. He had a few minutes before he needed to set up his photo shop, enough time to figure out where a three-year-old could have hidden a phone.

A trill of laughter coming from Glinda the Good Witch drifted his way, but he refused to be distracted. Unfortunately, Pippi had hunkered down with her mother. Her hands were occupied, one with a glue stick, the other attached to the thumb she'd popped in her mouth, so she must have stashed it somewhere. Maybe she'd slipped it into her shorts pocket under her gown. He remembered he'd programmed it to vibrate, and he set the camera down, then cut around the house to grab his BlackBerry with its built-in phone from his car. When he returned, he entered the number of the lost cell and stood off to the side to see if she'd react.

She didn't. Not in her pockets then.

Damn. He needed Rose. Except he'd cut her out of his life.

All of the little girls were clamoring for her attention, but instead of being rattled, she seemed to like it. He made himself turn away. So what if she looked as innocent as a Disney cartoon? He didn't forgive and he didn't forget.

He slipped deeper into the shade of the patio. None of the girls were ready for their photos, and he had time to make a few calls, but as sure as anything, she'd catch him at it and make some withering remark. Once again, the theme from Jaws blared in his head. He looked down.

Pippi wore bright blue eye shadow and sported a rosebud mouth slick with red lipstick. He quickly shoved his Black-Berry in his pocket.

"See my wand?"

"Hey, that's a wand, all right." He crouched, pretending to check out her artwork, but really getting down to business. "Pippi, show Uncle Dimitri where you put his phone."

She gave him a killer smile, front teeth the tiniest bit crooked, probably from that thumb. "Want phone," she said.

"That's great. Me, too. Let's go find it together."

She pointed to his pocket. "Want that phone!"

"Oh, no, you don't." He shot to his feet and strode away so that, if Pippi started to cry, he wasn't anywhere in the vicinity. "Who's ready for a picture?" he called out, hearty as all hell.

"Princess Anna, you're ready," Lissa said. "Go sit on the throne and let Prince Dimitri take your picture."

A snort came from the general direction of Glinda the Good Witch.

"I'm scared," the little girl whispered to Lissa.

"As well you should be," Glinda muttered.

Her comment should have aggravated him, but he hadn't wanted to crush her spirit, just to teach her a lesson about business that was ultimately for her own good. "Do you want me to go with you?" Lissa asked the child. But the little girl was gazing adoringly at Rose.

"I want my picture with her," she said.

Lissa grinned at Rose. "Fairy Godmother, you seem to have a photo call."

"Sure." Rose took the child's hand and headed toward the throne. As she reached his side, she stuck her nose in the air and swept past him. The nose, he couldn't help but notice, had a pink glitter smudge at the tip.

After that, it seemed as though every princess in the land wanted her photo taken with the good fairy godmother, who, not coincidentally, acted as if the royal photographer didn't exist. He knew how to play that game, and he confined his comments to the girls. "Give me a smile, princess. That's good."

Rose might be ignoring him, but she giggled with the children, cast magic spells, arbitrated disputes, and let Princess Pilar see what fairy godmothers wore under their gowns. He was more than a little interested himself. Unfortunately, this particular fairy godmother wore gray drawstring shorts instead of the bright red thong that would have been his choice. But, hey, that was just him.

Before long, he forgot about the phone calls he needed to make and concentrated on getting good pictures of the girls. He had to admit they were cute. Some of them were shy and needed encouragement. Others were big talkers. A couple of the four-year-olds wanted Rose to sit on the throne so they could perch in her lap. A few had her stand next to them. She made them laugh—made him smile—and by the time they'd gotten to the end of the photos, he'd decided to forgive her. What the hell. Everybody deserved a second chance. First he'd give her the lecture of her life, then he'd take her back on probation.

Photos done, she set off to help Hannah, who was supervising a game of pin the kiss on the frog. Since Hannah wasn't making anyone wear a blindfold, it didn't look like much of a game to him, but maybe he was missing something. Mia and Lissa, in the meantime, had started a treasure hunt.

Pippi popped up at his side and tried to frisk him for his backup phone, but he distracted her with an open pot of green eye shadow.

"Pippi! How did you get into that?" Lissa shrieked a few minutes later.

He busied himself with the camera and pretended not to see the hard, suspicious look Mia shot at him.

Lissa gathered the girls under a shady tree and entertained them with a story she seemed to be making up on the spot called Daphne and the Princess Party. She incorporated all the girls' names and even added a frog named Prince Dimitri who specialized in taking magical pictures. Now that he'd decided to forgive Rose, he relaxed enough to enjoy watching her. She sat cross-legged in the grass, her billowing skirts enveloping the children around her. She laughed when they did, clapped her hands, and, in general, acted pretty much like a kid herself.

While the tables were set up for refreshments, he was put in charge of the dragon pinata. "Don't make them wear blindfolds," Hannah whispered. "It scares them."

So he didn't. He let them whack away to their hearts' content, and when the pinata refused to break, took a swing at the sucker himself and finished it off. Goodies flew. He supervised the distribution and did a damn good job of it, too. Nobody got hurt, nobody cried, so maybe he wasn't entirely clueless about kids.

The refreshments arrived in a sea of pink. Pink punch. Sandwiches made with pink bread, a castle cake complete with pink-frosted ice-cream-cone turrets and a chunk conspicuously missing from the pink drawbridge, undoubtedly the work of young Andrew Calebow. Lissa slipped him a beer.

"You're an angel of mercy," he said.

"I don't know what we'd have done without you."

"It was fun." Well, the last twenty minutes anyway, when there'd been some action with the pinata and at least a faint potential for bloodshed.

"Princesses!" Mia called from the cake table. "I know we all want to thank our fairy godmother for taking time out of her busy schedule to be with us today. Princess Lissa, we loved your story so much, and Princess Hannah, everyone appreciated all the hugs you gave out." Her voice dropped to that coo he'd come to dread. "As for Prince Dimitri… We're so glad he could help us with the pinata. Who knew his talent for battering things would come in so handy?"

"Brother…" Lissa muttered. "She really does hate your guts."

Half an hour later, a group of tired princesses headed home with giant goody bags stuffed full of treats for themselves, as well as for their brothers and sisters.

"It was a very nice party," Hannah said from the front step as the bus disappeared. "I was worried."

Mia looped her arm around her daughter's shoulders and kissed the top of her head, just behind her tiara. "You made everybody feel right at home."

And what about me? Dimitri wanted to say. He couldn't see that he'd gained an inch of ground with her, even though he'd cleared tables, taken photos, and dealt with the pinata, all without making a single phone call or catching one lousy inning of the Sox game.

Rose braced her hand on the porch railing and wiggled out of her fairy godmother dress. "I'm afraid it has some grass stains and a punch spill, so I don't know if you'll be able to use it again."

"One Halloween was enough," Lissa replied.

"Thanks so much, Rose." Mia gave her the genuine smile she didn't offer him. "You were a perfect fairy godmother."

"I loved every minute. How are the twins feeling?"

"Sulky. I checked on them half an hour ago. They're upset about missing the party."

"I don't blame them. It was quite a party."

A cell rang. He automatically reached into his pocket, forgetting for an instant that he'd turned off his phone. He came up empty. What… ?

"Hey, babe…" Lissa spoke into her own cell. "Yes, we survived, no thanks to you and Dan. Luckily, your valiant agent came to our rescue… Yes, really."

He slapped his pockets. Where the hell was his BlackBerry?

"Wanna talk to Daddy!" Pippi squealed, reaching for Lissa's phone.

"Hold on a minute. Pip wants to say hi."

Lissa lowered the phone to her daughter's ear. Dimitri headed for the backyard. Damn it! She couldn't possibly have stolen two of them in one afternoon. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he was running around with the piniata.

He looked under the tree, in the grass, everywhere he could think of, and came up empty. She'd picked his pocket when he'd crouched down to talk to her.

"Are you missing something?" Mia cooed, coming up behind him. "A heart, perhaps?"

"My BlackBerry."

"I haven't seen it. But if I find it, I'll be sure to let you know right away." She spoke with all kinds of sincerity, but he suspected if she found it she'd toss it in her swimming pool.

"Much appreciated," he said.

Rose and Lissa had returned to the backyard, but Pippi seemed to have gone off with Hannah. "I'm exhausted," Lissa said, "and I'm used to being around kids. Poor Rose."

"I wouldn't have missed it for the world." Studiously ignoring him, Rose began gathering up the paper plates.

Mia waved her off. "Leave everything. My cleaning service is coming by soon. While they work, I'm going to put my feet up and recover. I haven't started the new book for the book club, and I have to make up for not finishing the last one."

"That book was a stinker," Rose said. "I don't know what Sonia was thinking of when she chose it."

Dimitri's ears pricked up. Rose and Mia were in a book club together? What other interesting secrets was she hiding from him?

Lissa yawned and stretched. "I like Angeline's idea of giving the guys a book of their own to read when we go on our retreat. Last year, whenever they weren't in the lake or with us, they were rehashing old games. I don't care what they say. That's just got to get boring after a while."

Every cell in Dimitri's body went on full alert.

"Don't let Trey choose," Mia said. "He's hung up on Marquez now, and I can't see the rest of the men getting too excited about One Hundred Years of Solitude."

There was only one Trey they could be talking about, and that was Trey Juarez, the Stars' All Pro former offensive tackle. Dimitri's mind raced. What kind of book club had Rose gotten herself involved in?

Even more important… Exactly how was he going to use this to his advantage?

Rose collected a few more paper plates, even though Mia had told her not to bother. She dreaded the idea of being closed up in the car with Dimitri for the ride home. Mia scooped a dab of pink icing from the mangled castle cake and popped it in her mouth. "Dan and I are both looking forward to the retreat at the campground. We love any excuse to go to Wind Lake. Lissa definitely lucked out when she married a man with his own resort."

"With training camp coming up, it'll be the last break any of us have for a long time." Lissa turned to Rose. "I almost forgot. We had a cancellation on one of the cottages. You and Janine can share it, since you're both singles, or would you rather keep your room at the B&B?"

Rose thought it over. Although she'd never been to the Wind Lake Campground, she knew it had both a Victorian bed-and-breakfast and a number of small cottages. "I guess I'd—"

"The cottage for sure," Dimitri said. "Apparently Rose hasn't gotten around to mentioning that she ordered me to go with her."

Rose turned to stare at him.

Mia's finger froze in the cake icing. "You're coming on the retreat?"

Rose spotted a small pulse beating at the base of his neck. He loved this. She could expose him with only a few words, but he was an adrenaline junky, and he'd thrown the dice. "I've never been able to turn down a bet," he said. "She thinks I can't go an entire weekend without my cell."

"You can barely make it through dinner," Lissa muttered.

"I'll expect an apology from both of you after I've proved exactly how wrong you are."

Lissa's and Mia's expressions were equally quizzical as they turned to Rose. Her wounded pride demanded she punish him. Right now. She deserved her pound of flesh for the cold-blooded way he'd fired her.

An awkward pause fell. He watched her, waited, the pulse at the base of his neck marking the passing seconds.

"He'll fold." She forced a smile. "Everybody knows it but him."

"Interesting." Lissa refrained from saying more, although Rose knew she wanted to.

Twenty minutes later, she and Dimitri were heading back toward the city, the silence in the car as thick as the castle cake's pink frosting, but not nearly as sweet. He'd done better than she'd expected with the girls. He'd listened respectfully to Hannah's concerns, and Pippi adored him. Rose had been surprised how many times she'd looked over to see him crouched down talking to her.

Dimitri finally broke the silence. "I'd already made up my mind to rehire you before I heard about the retreat."

"Oh, I believe you," she said, using sarcasm to hide her hurt.

"I mean it."

"Whatever lets you sleep at night."

"Okay, Rose. Unload. Get it all out. Everything you've been saving up all afternoon."

"Unloading is the prerogative of equals. Lowly employees like myself pucker their lips and kiss the sweet spot."

"You were out of line, and you know it. This thing with Mia never gets any better. I thought I might be able to change that."

"Whatever."

He shot into the left lane. "Do you want me to bow out? I can call Lissa in the morning and tell her that something's come up. Is that what you want me to do?"

"Like I have any choice if I want to keep you as a client."

"Okay, let me make it easy for you. Regardless of what you decide, you're rehired. One way or another, our contract still holds."

She let him see she wasn't impressed with his offer. "And I can just imagine how cooperative you'd be if I refused to take you on the retreat."

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you to be honest. Look me in the eye and admit that you didn't have the slightest intention of rehiring me until you heard about the retreat."

"Yeah, you're right." He didn't look her in the eye, but at least he was being honest. "I wasn't going to forgive you. And you know why? Because I'm a ruthless son of a bitch."

"Fine. You can come with me."

Rose spent the next few days feeling pissy. She tried to chalk her mood up to getting her period, but she wasn't as good at self-deception as she used to be. Dimitri's cold-blooded behavior had left her feeling bruised, betrayed, and just plain mad. One mistake, and he'd written her off. If it weren't for the Wind Lake retreat, she'd never have seen him again. She was totally expendable, another one of his worker bees.

On Tuesday he left a terse voice message. "Tasha has someone she wants me to meet at eight-thirty on Thursday evening. Set me up with one of your introductions at eight so we can kill two birds with one stone."

Finally, she put the anger where it belonged, on her own shoulders. He wasn't to blame for those sexual images that wanted to burn themselves into her brain when her guard was down. To him, this was business. She was the one who'd let it become personal, and if she forgot that again, she deserved the consequences.

On Thursday evening before she headed to Probka's for the next round of introductions, she met her newest client at Ear-wax. Ray Fiedler had been referred by a relative of one of Nana's oldest friends, and Rose had sent him on his first date the night before with a Loyola faculty member she'd met during her campus cruising. "We had a nice time and everything," Ray said after they'd settled around one of Earwax's wooden tables, which was painted like the wheel of a circus wagon, "but Carole's not really my physical type."

"How do you mean?" Rose drew her eyes away from the ominous beginnings of his comb-over. She knew the answer, but she wanted to make him say it.

"She's… I mean, she's a really nice woman. A lot of people don't get my jokes. It's just that I like women who are… more fit."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"Carole's a little overweight."

She took a sip of her cappuccino and studied the red-and-gold wooden dragon on the wall rather than the extra twenty pounds that hung around what used to be Ray Fiedler's waistline.

He wasn't stupid. "I know I'm not exactly Mr. Buff myself, but I work out."

Rose fought the urge to reach across the table and smack him in the head. Still, this type of challenge was part of what she liked about being a matchmaker. "You usually date thin women, then?"

"They don't have to be beauty queens, but the women I've dated have been pretty nice looking."

Rose pretended to look thoughtful. "I'm a little confused. When we first talked, you gave me the impression that you hadn't dated in a long time."

"Well, I haven't, but…"

She let him squirm for a few moments. A kid with multiple piercings passed their table followed by a pair of soccer moms. "So this weight thing is really important to you? More important than personality or intelligence?"

He looked as if she'd asked a trick question. "I just had somebody a little… different in mind."

And don't we all? Rose thought. The Fourth of July weekend was coming up, and she had no date, no prospects for a date, and no plans beyond starting her exercise program again and trying not to brood about the Wind Lake book club retreat. Ray fiddled with his spoon, and her annoyance with him faded. He was a decent guy, just clueless.

"Maybe you're not a love match," she said, "but I'll tell you the same thing I told Carole last night when she expressed a few misgivings. You have a common background, and you enjoyed each other's company. I think that justifies another date, regardless of your current lack of physical attraction. If nothing else, you could end up with a friend."

A few beats passed before he got it. "What do you mean misgivings? She doesn't want to see me again?"

"She has a few doubts, just like you do."

His hand flew to his head. "It's because of my hair, isn't it? That's all women care about. They see a guy who's losing his hair, and they don't want to give him the time of day."

"Women are less influenced by a receding hairline or a few extra pounds than men assume. Do you know what's most important to women as far as male physical appearance goes?"

"Height? Hey, I'm almost five-ten."

"Not height. Studies show that good grooming is most important to women. They value cleanliness and neatness more than anything else." She paused. "And good haircuts are very important to women."

"She didn't like my haircut?"

Rose gave him a wide smile. "Isn't that cool? A haircut can be fixed so easily. Here's the name of a stylist who gives great men's cuts." She slid the business card across the table. "You've got everything else together, so this will be easy."

It hadn't occurred to him that he might be the one getting rejected, and his competitive instincts came into play. By the time they left the coffee shop, he'd begrudgingly agreed to both the haircut and to meeting Carole again. Rose told herself she was getting good at this, and she shouldn't let her mother or her troubles with Dimitri Belikov plant all those seeds of doubt.

She entered Probka's in a better mood, but things went to hell quickly. Dimitri hadn't arrived, and the De Paul harpist she'd arranged for him to meet called to say she'd cut her leg and was heading for the emergency room. She'd barely hung up before Dimitri called. "The plane's late," he said. "I'm on the ground at O'Hare, but we're waiting for a gate to open up."

She told him about the harpist and then, because he sounded tired, suggested he postpone his Power Matches date.

"Tempting, but I'd better not," he said. "Tasha's really high on this one. A gate's opening up now, so I shouldn't be too late. Hold the fort till I get there."

"All right."

Rose chatted with the bartender until Tasha's candidate arrived. Her eyes widened. No wonder Tasha had been enthusiastic. She was the most beautiful woman Rose had ever seen…

The next morning Rose returned from her semiannual morning run to see Tasha Ozera standing on her porch. They'd never met, but Rose recognized her from her Web site photograph. Only as she came closer, however, did she realize this was the same woman she'd seen standing in front of Probka's the night she'd introduced Dimitri to Barrie. Tasha wore a silky black blouse crisscrossed at her small waist, shocking pink slacks, and retro black patent leather heels. Her inky hair was beautifully cut, the kind of hair that moved with the slightest toss of the head, and her skin flawless. As for her body… She obviously only ate on government holidays.

"Don't you dare pull another trick like you did last night," Tasha said the minute Rose's running shoes hit the porch steps. She oozed the brittle sort of beauty that always made Rose feel dumpy, but especially this morning in her baggy shorts and a sweaty orange T-shirt that said bill's heating and cooling.

"Good morning to you, too." Rose pulled the key from her shorts pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped aside to let Tasha enter.

Tasha took in the reception area and Rose's office with a single disdainful glance. "Do not ever… ever… take it upon yourself to get rid of one of my candidates before Dimitri has had a chance to meet her."

Rose closed the door. "You sent a bad candidate."

Tasha pointed one manicured finger in the direction of Rose's sweat-beaded forehead. "That was for him to decide, not you."

Rose ignored the fingernail pistol. "I'm sure you know how he feels about wasting time."

Tasha threw up her hand. "Can you really be this incompetent? Claudia Reeshman is the top model in Chicago. She's beautiful. She's intelligent. There are a million men who'd like a shot at her."

"That may be true, but she seems to have some serious emotional problems." A fairly obvious drug habit topped the list, although Rose wouldn't make any accusations she couldn't prove. "She started crying before her first drink arrived."

"Everyone has a bad day now and then." Tasha draped a hand on her hip, a feminine pose, but she made it look as aggressive as a karate chop. "I've worked all month trying to talk her into meeting Dimitri. I finally get her to agree, and what do you do? You decide he's not going to like her, and you send her home."

"Claudia was going through more than a bad day," Rose countered. "She's an emotional train wreck."

"I don't care if she was rolling on the floor barking like a dog. What you did was stupid and underhanded."

Rose had dealt with strong personalities all her life, and she wasn't going to back down from this one, even with sweat dripping in her eyes and bill's heating and cooling sticking to her chest. "Dimitri's been clear about what he expects."

"I'd say the sexiest, most sought after woman in Chicago exceeds his expectations."

"He wants more than beauty in a wife."

"Oh, please. When it comes to men like Dimitri, cup size wins over IQ any time."

They were getting nowhere, so Rose did her best to sound professional instead of pissed off. "This whole process would be easier for both of us if we could work together."

Tasha looked as if Rose had offered her a big bag of fatty junk food. "I have strict qualifications for my trainees, Ms. Mazur. You don't fit any of them."

"Now that's just bitchy." Rose stalked to the door. "From now on, take your grievances right to Dimitri."

"Oh, believe me, I will. And I can't wait to hear what he has to say about this one."

What the hell were you thinking?" Dimitri bellowed into the phone a few hours later, not exactly yelling, but coming close. "I just found out you blew off Claudia Reeshman?"

"And?" Rose took a vicious jab at the notepad next to her kitchen phone with a lollipop pen.

"I obviously gave you way too much power."

"When I called you back last night and told you I'd canceled the introduction because she wasn't what you wanted, you thanked me."

"You neglected to mention her name. I've never had a thing for models, but Claudia Reeshman… Jesus, Rose…"

"Maybe you'd like to fire me again."

"Will you let it go?"

"How's this going to work?" She took another stab at the notepad. "Do you trust me or not?"

Through the phone, she heard a car horn, followed by a long silence. "I trust you," he finally said.

She almost choked. "Really?"

"Really."

Just like that, she got a lump in her throat the size of the Sears Tower. She cleared it away and tried to sound as though this was exactly what she'd expected him to say. "Good. I hear horns. Are you on the road?"

"I told you I was driving to Indianapolis."

"That's right. It's Friday." For the next two nights, he'd be in Indiana with a client who played for the Colts. He'd originally planned the trip for the following weekend, but he'd rescheduled because of the book club retreat she didn't want to think about. "The way you keep going out of town on weekends makes scheduling these introductions challenging."

"Business comes first. You sure did piss off Tasha. She wants your head on a platter."

"Along with a knife and some fat-free sour cream to help wash it down."

"I didn't know Reeshman was still in Chicago. I thought she'd gone to New York for good."

Rose suspected Claudia didn't want to be that far from her drug dealer.

"Do me a favor," he said. "If Tasha sets up a date for me with anybody else who's posed for SI's swimsuit edition, at least tell me her name before you get rid of her."

"All right."

"And thanks for agreeing to help me out tomorrow."

She drew a daisy on her notepad. "What's not to like about spending the day running around town with your credit card and no spending limit?"

"Plus Ivan and Ryan Aylesworth's mother. Don't forget that part. If Mrs. Aylesworth wasn't so afraid of him, Ivan could have done this by himself."

"She's not the only one who's afraid of him. You're sure we'll be safe?"

"As long as you don't mention politics, Taco Bell, or the color red."

"Thanks for the warning."

"And don't let him get too close to anybody wearing a hat."

"I'm going now."

As she hung up, she realized she was smiling, which wasn't a good idea at all. Pythons could strike at will, and they seldom gave any warning.

Ryan Aylesworth's mother, Arte, had salt-and-pepper dreadlocks, a tall, full-figured body, and a hearty laugh. Rose liked her immediately. With Ivan as their travel guide, they saw the sights, beginning with an early morning architectural boat tour followed by a sweep through the Impressionists collection at the Art Institute. Although Ivan handled all the arrangements, he stayed in the background. He was a strange guy, full of intriguing contradictions that made Rose want to know more about him.

After a late lunch, they headed for Millennium Park, the glorious new lakefront park Chicagoans believed finally put them ahead of San Francisco as America's most beautiful city. Rose had visited the park many times, and she enjoyed showing off the terraced gardens, the fifty-foot-high Crown Fountain with its changing video images, and the shiny, mirrorlike Cloud Gate sculpture affectionately known as The Bean.

As they walked through the futuristic music pavilion, where the bandshell's curling stainless-steel ribbons blended so exquisitely with the skyscrapers behind it, their conversation returned to Arte's son, who'd soon be playing fullback for the Bears. "Ryan had agents all over him," his mother said. "It was a happy day for me when he signed with Dimitri. I stopped worrying so much about people taking advantage of him. I know Dimitri's going to look out for him."

"He definitely cares about his clients," Rose said.

The July sunlight flirted with the waves on the lake as the two women followed Ivan over the snaking steel pedestrian bridge that meandered above the traffic on Columbus Drive. When they reached the other side, they wandered toward the jogging trail. As they stopped to admire the view, a biker called out to Ivan, then pulled up beside him.

Rose and Arte fell still, both of them gazing at the man's skintight black biker shorts. "Time to praise God for the glory of his creation," Arte said.

"Amen."

They moved closer, checking out the biker's sweat-slicked calves and the blue-and-white mesh T-shirt clinging to his perfectly developed chest. He was in his mid-to-late twenties, and he wore a high-tech red helmet that hid the top of his damp hair, but not his Adonis profile.

"I need a plunge in the lake to cool off," Rose whispered.

"If I were twenty years younger…"

Ivan gestured toward them. "Ladies, I've got somebody for you to meet."

"Come to mama," Arte murmured, which made Rose giggle.

Just before they reached the men, Rose recognized the biker. "Wow. I know who that is."

"Mrs. Aylesworth, Rose," Ivan said. "This is the famous Adrian Ivashkov, the Stars' next great quarterback."

Although Rose had never met Chris' backup in person, she'd seen him play, and she knew him by reputation. Arte shook his hand. "It's nice to meet you, Adrian. You tell your friends to take it easy on my boy Ryan this season."

Adrian gave her his ladykiller smile. And didn't he know exactly the effect he had on women? Rose thought.

"We'll do just that for you, ma'am." Oozing sex appeal like an oil slick, he turned his charm on her. His openly assessing eyes slid down her body with a confidence that said he could have her—or any woman he wanted—whenever and however he liked. Oh, no, you can't, you naughty, sexy little boy.

"Rose is it?"

"I'd better check my driver's license to make sure," she said. "I'm all out of breath here."

Ivan choked, then laughed.

Apparently Ivashkov wasn't used to women calling his visual bluffs because he looked momentarily taken aback. Then he ratcheted up the old charm-o-meter. "Maybe it's the heat."

"Oh, it's hot all right." Normally, gorgeous men intimidated her, but he was so full of himself she was merely amused.

He laughed, this time genuinely, and she found herself liking him in spite of his cockiness. "I do admire a feisty woman," he said.

She slipped her sunglasses lower on her nose and gazed at him over the top. "I'll just bet, Mr. Ivashkov, that you admire women in general."

"And they admire you right back." Arte chuckled.

Adrian turned to Ivan. "Where did you find these two?"

"Cook County Jail."

Arte snorted. "You behave yourself, Ivan."

Adrian returned his attention to Rose. "Something about your name rings a bell. Wait a minute. Aren't you Dimitri's matchmaker?"

"How did you know about that?"

"Word gets around." A Rollerblader whizzed by, brunette hair flying. He took his time enjoying the view. "I never met a matchmaker," he finally said. "Maybe I should hire you?"

"You do know my business doesn't have anything to do with lighting campfires, right?"

He folded his arms over his chest. "Hey, everybody wants to meet somebody special."

She smiled. "Not when they're having so much fun meeting all those un-specials."

Adrian turned to Ivan. "I don't think she likes me."

"She likes you," Ivan said, "but she thinks you're immature."

"I'm sure you'll grow out of it," Rose said.

Ivan slapped him on the back. "I know it doesn't happen very often, but it looks like Rose's immune to your movie star face."

"Then somebody better get her to the eye doctor," Arte muttered, which made them all laugh.

Adrian wheeled his bike off the path and leaned it against a tree while the four of them chatted. Adrian asked Arte about Ryan, and they talked about the Bears for a while. Then Ivan brought up Adrian's search for an agent. "I hear you've been meeting with Jack Riley at IMG."

"I'm meeting with a lot of people," Adrian replied.

"You should at least hear what Dimitri has to say. He's a smart guy."

"Dimitri Belikov is number one on my do-not-call list. I've got enough ways of making Mia unhappy." Adrian turned to Rose. "How'd you like to come to the beach with me tomorrow?"

She hadn't seen this coming, and she was stunned. Also suspicious. "Why?"

"Can I be honest?"

"I don't know. Can you?"

"I need protection."

"From overtanning?"

"Nope." He flashed his glamour boy smile. "I love the beach, but so many people recognize me that it's hard to chill. Usually, if I'm with a woman, people give me a little more space."

"And I'm the only woman you can find to go with you? I doubt that."

His eyes twinkled. "Don't take this the wrong way, but it'll be more relaxing if I invite somebody I'm not planning to sleep with."

Rose burst out laughing.

"Poor Adrian needs a friend, not a lover." Ivan chuckled.

"You're invited, too, Mrs. Aylesworth," Adrian said politely.

"Honey, not even a hottie like you could get me out in public wearing a bathing suit."

"What do you think, Rose?" Adrian cocked his head toward the lakefront. "We'll go to the Oak Street Beach. I'll bring a cooler. We can hang out, swim, listen to music. It'll be fun. You can lower your standards for a couple of hours, can't you?"

Her life had gotten so weird since she'd met Dimitri Belikov. Chicago's hottest young jock had just asked her to spend Sunday afternoon lying on the beach with him when, only two days ago, she'd been feeling sorry for herself because she didn't have any plans for the Fourth of July weekend. "As long as you promise not to ogle younger women while I'm with you."

"I'd never do that!" he declared, apparently forgetting the brunette Rollerblader.

"Just so we're clear."

And he didn't.

He didn't talk on his cell, either, or whip out a BlackBerry. It was a hot, cloudless day, and he even provided a beach umbrella to protect her skin. They lay on towels listening to music, talking when they felt like it, and gazing out at the water when they didn't. She wore her two-piece white suit, which was cut high enough at the thigh to make her legs look longer, but not so high that she needed a Brazilian wax. Some of his fans interrupted, but not too many. Still, everyone seemed to want a piece of Adrian Ivashkov. Maybe that was why she sensed an odd sort of loneliness beneath his oversize ego. He dodged questions about his family, and she didn't press him.

She had four voice mails waiting when she got home, all from Dimitri, demanding she call him right away. Instead, she took a shower. She was toweling her hair dry when she heard the doorbell ring. She fastened her yellow terry robe at the waist and headed downstairs, running one hand through her mop as she padded to the door.

A tall hunk of a man gazed back at her through the wavy glass. The Python was paying his second house call.


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: Only a short chapter (bit over 3500 words) because you were begging for another update. Also WARNING this chapter does has a lemon that some may not like… anyway way happy reading!**

Chapter Eight

Only two boxes of thin mint cookies this year, girls," Rose said as she pulled the door open. "I'm on a diet."

Dimitri pushed past her. "Do you ever check your phone messages?"

She gazed down at her bare feet. "Once again, you've caught me looking my best."

He was in hyper mode, and he barely glanced at her, exactly as it should be. "You look beautiful. So there I am, stuck in a Bible study class in Indianapolis, when I hear the news that my matchmaker is sunning herself on the beach with Adrian Ivashkov."

"You took a phone call in the middle of Bible study?"

"I was bored."

"And you were in the class because… ? Never mind. Your client wanted you to go." She shut the door.

"Why the hell did Ivashkov ask you out?"

"He's smitten. It happens all the time. Raoul says I can't help the effect I have on men."

"Uh-huh. Ivan told me Adrian wanted to go to the beach, and he needed a decoy."

"Then why did you ask?"

"So I could get Raoul's take on it."

She grinned and padded after him into her reception room. "Your scary henchman knew about this yesterday. Why did he wait until today to tell you?"

"My question exactly. You got anything to eat?"

"Some leftover pad thai, but it's starting to grow hair, so I can't recommend it."

"I'm ordering a pizza. How do you like it?"

Maybe it was because she was practically naked and didn't like his attitude, or maybe she was just an idiot because she settled a hand on her hip, slid her eyes over him, and let the words slide off her tongue. "I like it hot… and… spicy."

His eyelids dropped to the V of her robe. "Exactly what Raoul told me."

She beat a hasty retreat for the stairs. His low chuckle accompanied her all the way to the top.

She took her time changing into her last pair of clean shorts and a vintage blue camie top with a lacy insert that nestled in for her cleavage. Just because she had to be on guard didn't mean she couldn't look good. She dusted bronzing powder over her cheeks, dabbed on lip gloss, then ran a big-tooth comb through her hair, where a few rebellious corkscrews had already begun framing her face like Christmas curling ribbon.

When she got downstairs, Dimitri was in her office tilted back in her chair, his crossed ankles propped on her desk, and her receiver tucked under his chin. His eyes took in her lacy cleavage, then her bare legs, and he smiled. He was messing with her again, and she didn't let herself make anything out of it.

"I know, Rocco, but she's only got ten fingers. How many diamonds can she wear?" As he listened to the response at the other end of the line, he frowned. "Listen to the people who care about you. I'm not saying she isn't for real, but give it a couple more months, okay? We'll talk next week." He slammed down the phone and dropped his feet to the floor. "Bloodsuckers. They see these guys coming and take them for all they're worth."

"These would be the same guys who stand in hotel lobbies pointing their finger at the bloodsuckers and going you, you, and you? Then ten minutes later they're explaining all the reasons they won't wear a condom."

"Yeah, well, there's definitely that." He picked up the beer he'd swiped from her refrigerator. "But some of these women are unbelievable. The guys might be tough while they're on the field, but once the game's over, it's a different story. Especially the younger ones. Suddenly all these beautiful women are coming on to them and saying they're in love. The next thing you know, the boys are giving out sports cars and diamond rings for one-month anniversary presents. And don't get me started on the bottom feeders who get pregnant so they can squeeze out hush money."

"Again, nothing a condom wouldn't take care of." She picked up a blue plastic watering can and carried it over to Nana's African violets.

"The guys are young. They think they're invincible. I know in Rose Land everybody's nice and sweet, but there are more avaricious women in the world than you can imagine."

Rose stopped watering to gaze at him. "Did one of those avaricious women find her way into your pockets? Is that why you're so picky?"

"By the time I'd earned enough to be a target, I'd learned how to watch out for myself."

"Just out of curiosity… Have you ever been in love? With a woman," she said hastily, so he didn't start throwing the names of his clients at her.

"I was engaged in law school. It didn't work out."

"Why not?"

"The pain's too fresh for me to revisit," he drawled.

She made a face at him, and he smiled. His cell rang. As he answered, she realized he looked more at home sitting at her desk than she did. How did he manage it? Somehow, he found a way to mark whatever space he occupied. He might as well lift his leg when he walked into a room.

She finished watering the African violets and headed for the kitchen, where she unloaded Nana's cranky dishwasher. The doorbell rang, and a few moments later Dimitri appeared with the pizza. She gathered up plates and napkins. He retrieved another beer for himself and one for her and carried them over to the table.

As he sat, he gazed at the blue enameled cupboards and Hello Kitty cookie jar. "I like this place. It's homey."

"Tactfully phrased. I know I should update, but I haven't gotten around to it." She could barely afford paint, let alone a major remodeling.

They began to eat, and the silence that settled over them was surprisingly comfortable. She wondered what he was doing for the Fourth tomorrow. He polished off his first slice and took another. "How is it, Rose, that you've managed to get close to the two people who are most important to me right now? What is it with you?"

"Natural charm coupled with the fact that I have a life, and you don't." Not much of a life. On Wednesday night, Mr. Dashkov had bullied her into attending the seniors' potluck at the rec center. She'd only agreed after he'd promised to take Mrs. Valerio out again.

Dimitri swiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin. "What did Ivashkov say about me?"

She nibbled on her crust. This, she reminded herself, was the reason he'd suggested their cozy dinner party. "He said you're numero uno on his do-not-call list. Pretty much a direct quote. But you probably already know that."

"And what did you tell him?"

"Nothing. I was too busy drooling. God, he's gorgeous."

He frowned. "Adrian Ivashkov isn't one of those naive kids I was talking about. You watch yourself with him. He goes through women like potato chips."

"Well, baby, he can snack on me anytime he wants."

To her surprise, he took her seriously. "No way you're falling for him."

Now this was interesting. "Can I get back to you on that?"

"Look, Rose, Adrian's not a bad guy, but when it comes to women, all he cares about is racking up notches."

"Like I don't?"

"God, you're a wiseass."

He'd handed her a golden opportunity to delve a little deeper into the life and times of Dimitri Belikov. "Just out of curiosity, how many notches did you rack up? When you were racking them up, that is. And how long ago was that, by the way?"

"Too many notches. I'm not proud of it, either, so no lectures."

"You really think your notching days are behind you?"

"If I didn't, I wouldn't be getting married."

"You're not getting married. You haven't even gone out on a second date."

"Only because I've hired two semi-incompetent matchmakers."

She hadn't told him about Tasha's visit, but what could she say? That Tasha Ozera was a bitch. He probably already knew that. Besides, she had something else she needed to tell him, and she dreaded doing it. "I got a call from Claudia Reeshman this morning. She still wants to meet you."

"No kidding?" He kicked back in his chair, a crooked grin on his face. "Why'd she call you instead of Powers?"

"I guess we sort of connected on Thursday."

"Amazing."

"I thought I'd convinced her you were unworthy, but apparently not." She picked up her pizza, even though she'd lost her appetite. "So I suppose you want me to add her to Wednesday night's agenda?"

"No."

A glob of cheese slid into her lap. "You don't?"

"Didn't you say she wasn't right for me?"

"She's not, but…"

"Then no."

Something warm and sweet unfurled inside her. "Thanks." Embarrassed, she scrubbed at her lap.

"You're welcome."

She took her time wiping off her fingers. "The woman I'm introducing you to on Wednesday isn't as beautiful."

"Not many are. Reeshman's last SI cover was incredible."

"She's a harpist finishing up a master's in music performance. Twenty-eight, an undergraduate degree from Vassar. You were supposed to meet her last Thursday."

"Is she ugly?"

"Of course she's not ugly." She snatched up her plate and carried it to the sink.

Dimitri didn't say anything for a few minutes. Finally, he picked up his own plate and brought it to her. "On the off chance Adrian calls you again, be careful what you say about me."

"What makes you think there's only an off chance?"

He nodded toward the table. "You want another slice?"

"No." She shoved his plate in the dishwasher. "No, I want to hear this. Why are you so sure he won't call?"

"Calm down. I only meant that you've got a few years on him."

"So?" She slammed the dishwasher closed and told herself to shut up, but the words kept coming. "Older women and younger men are all the fashion these days. Don't you read People?"

"Adrian only dates party girls."

She knew what he really meant, and a streak of masochism made her push him to say it aloud. "Spit it out. You don't think I'm hot enough for him."

"Stop putting words in my mouth. All I'm saying is that the two of you aren't going to make a love connection."

"True. But we might make a sex connection."

She'd flung the last remnants of caution to the winds, and a long, lean finger came right at her. "You're not having sex with him. I know these guys, and you don't. I'm trusting you about Claudia Reeshman. You need to trust me about Adrian Ivashkov."

She wouldn't let him off that easily. "You're looking for a wife. Maybe I'm just looking for a little fun."

"If you need fun," he shot back, "I'll give you fun."

She was stunned.

A car raced by in the street outside, its radio blaring. They stared at each other. He looked surprised, too. Or maybe not. Slowly, deliberately, the corner of his mouth curled, and she realized the Python was toying with her again.

"Gotta go, Roza. I have some work I need to catch up on. Thanks for dinner."

Only after the front door closed behind him did she manage a weak "You're welcome."

"Yes… Yes, all right. Send him up." Tasha's hands trembled as she set down the phone. Ivan was in the lobby.

He hadn't called once since their date at the sports bar ten days ago, and now he'd shown up at her condo at nine o'clock on the night of the Fourth of July, expecting her to be waiting for him. She should have told the doorman to send him away, but she hadn't.

She moved automatically toward her bedroom, stepping out of her cotton shift on the way. The Jensons had invited her out on their boat tonight to watch the fireworks, but fireworks depressed her, like most holiday rituals, and she'd declined. It had been a terrible week. First the Claudia Reeshman debacle, then the assistant she'd hired to replace Iris Kane had quit, saying the job was "too stressful." Tasha desperately missed the mentoring program. She'd even tried to set up a lunch with Juanita to discuss the situation, but the director was dodging her calls.

She tried to imagine how Ivan would react to the condo she'd bought after her divorce. Because she used her home to host monthly cocktail parties for her most important clients, she'd chosen a spacious unit on the top floor of an excruciatingly expensive prewar limestone just off Lakeshore Drive. She wanted to project old-world elegance, so she'd borrowed from the color palate of the Dutch masters: rich shades of brown, antique gold, muted olive, along with subtle touches of bittersweet. In the living room, a pair of masculine, deep-seated couches and a big leather club chair bordered the tea-stained oriental rug. A similar oriental rug complemented the heavy teak dining room table with its lushly upholstered side chairs. It was important for men to feel comfortable here, so she kept the tables free of bric-a-brac and the liquor cabinet well stocked. Only in her bedroom did she indulge her passion for over-the-top femininity. Her bed was a confection of ivory and ecru satin, with lace pillows and beribboned shams. Chunky silver candleholders sat on delicate chests, and a small crystal froth of a chandelier dangled in the corner near a powder puff reading chair piled with fashion magazines, several literary novels, and a self-help book that purported to help women find their inner happiness.

Maybe Ivan was drunk. Maybe that's why he'd shown up tonight. Still, who knew what motivated a man like him? She pulled on a scoop-necked sundress printed with antique roses and slipped into a pair of rose-colored ankle-strap stilettos embellished with tiny leather butterflies. The buzzer sounded. She forced herself to walk slowly to the door.

He wore a silky long-sleeved taupe shirt and matching trousers in one of those pricey microfabrics that moved against his legs. From the shoulders down, he looked muscular, but respectable, even elegant. But from the shoulders up, all respectability vanished. His sinewy tattooed neck, ice pick blue eyes, and ominous shaved head made him appear even more dangerous than she remembered.

He gazed around the living room without speaking, then walked toward the French doors that led to her small balcony. Each summer she vowed to start a container garden there, but gardening took patience she didn't possess, and she never followed through. A cloud of humidity blew into the climate-controlled interior as he opened one of the doors and stepped outside. She considered for a few moments then wandered over to the wet bar. She ignored the assortment of imported beers he'd prefer, choosing instead a bottle of champagne and two frail tulip goblets. She carried them over to the French doors and flicked on the exterior light before she went outside.

The air was thick and woolly, with high, dark clouds swirling over the roof of the apartment building on the opposite corner. She approached the concrete railing, which had a wide, flat top supported by chubby, urn-shaped balusters. She set the champagne bottle down, along with the delicate glasses.

He still hadn't spoken. On the street ten stories below, a car pulled out of a parking space and turned the corner. A group of stragglers headed toward the lake to view the city's fireworks display, which would be starting any minute. Ivan uncorked the bottle and poured. The fragile glasses didn't look nearly as ridiculous in his big hands as she'd hoped they would. The silence between them lengthened. She wished she'd spoken when he'd first come in, because now it felt like a competition to see who could hold out the longest.

A car horn blared, and the muscles in her shoulders knotted with tension. She slipped one of her feet onto the bottom rail. The concrete baluster scraped her bare ankle bone. He set his glass on the rail next to the bottle and turned toward her. She didn't mean to look up, but she couldn't help herself. Dark clouds swirled behind his head in a devil's halo. He was going to kiss her, she could feel it. But he didn't. Instead, he took the tulip glass from her fingers and set it next to his. Then he lifted his arm and ran his thumb across her lips with just enough pressure to smear her lipstick onto her cheek.

The tiny hairs at the back of her neck prickled. She told herself to move away, but she couldn't. Instead, he was the one who moved… over to the French doors, where he reached inside and flicked off the light, plunging the balcony into darkness. A thrill of panic shot through her. Her heart began to pound. She turned away and curled her damp palms around the railing. She felt him come up behind her, and she trembled as his big hands settled around her hips. The heat of his palms penetrated the silky rose-garden fabric of her dress. Beneath, she wore only a pair of silk tap pants in palest cream. Her skin quivered, and heat licked at her insides. He traced the narrow band at the top of the tap pants through her dress, the exploration more erotic than if he'd touched bare flesh.

A diadem of strobes erupted in the sky, crystal white spheres of noise and light exploding over the lake to announce the beginning of the fireworks display. His breath fell hot on her damp neck, and his teeth settled around the tendon that marked the place where her neck and shoulder joined. He restrained her that way—not hurting, but holding her still like an animal. His hands slipped under the hem of her skirt.

She didn't try to get away, didn't move. He kneaded her bottom through her tap pants. He ran his thumbs down the crack, then up, then down again, taking his time. A light flicked on in the window across the street, and golden palms opened like umbrellas in the sky. She caught her breath as his thumbs slid between her thighs.

Just when her legs felt as though they were giving out, he eased his mouth from her neck and glazed his tongue over the place where he'd held her prisoner. He knelt behind her. She stayed where she was, gripping the rail, staring out as orange and silver serpents uncoiled against the clouds. He touched her calves, then slid his hands up beneath her skirt to skim her outer thighs, then her tap pants. He hooked his thumbs over the waistband and drew them down to her ankles. He lifted one foot and pulled the panties over her shoe. They pooled around her opposite ankle where he left them. He rose.

A forest of blue and green willows dripped from the sky. She felt his hand against the center of her back. He pressed, but it took her a moment to understand what he wanted her to do. Slowly, he bent her over the rail. Below, a taxi slid along the street. He pushed her floaty skirt up to her waist. From the front, the fabric covered her modestly so that anyone glancing out an opposite window would only see a woman leaning over the balcony rail with a man standing behind her. But from the back, she was fully exposed to him.

Now when he traced her, no silky barrier lay between her flesh and the pads of his thumb. He opened her like the segments of an orange. Played in the juice. Her breath came shallow and fast. She moaned. He stepped back. She heard a rustle as he dealt with his clothes, dealt with a condom that told her he'd planned this from the beginning. And then he dealt with her.

She caught her breath against the thrilling indignity of his fingers. Comets shot into the sky then raced to their death in the water. She gripped the rail tighter and gasped as he spread her with his thumbs, toyed, then thrust deep inside her. He drove from behind, gripping her hips, holding her where he wanted her to be, where she wanted to be. He stroked… stretching her, filling her. She soared with the comets… bloomed with the willows… exploded with the rockets. And in the end, she tumbled to the earth in a shower of sparks.

Afterward, he smoothed her skirt back in place then disappeared into her bathroom with its antique vanity, Italian mirror, and Colefax & Fowler wallpaper. When he came out, he looked cool and unruffled. She wanted to weep. Instead, she gave him her iciest glare, strode to the door, and yanked it open.

The corner of his mouth twitched with amusement. He made his way to her side and traced the lipstick smear on her cheek with his finger. She refused to flinch. With another smile, he stepped into the hallway and walked toward the ornate brass elevator. Before he got there, he turned back and spoke for the first time.

"Are we clear now?"


End file.
